Archive for June, 2009

At the risk of incurring thewrath of those pushing the “Free Gaza” campaign, we’re going to say what no one else wants to admit: that up until this point, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has given the anti-Zionist movement absolutely nothing.

We believe that her current Gaza activity is a controlled-opposition operation aimed at giving her undeserved credibility within anti-Zionist circles and establishing her as a potential leader of the movement.

Instead of mobilizing our combined resources behind the theatre unfolding in the eastern Mediterranean, let’s instead strike them where they’re weakest: on Israel’s central role in the 9/11 attacks.

We propose a coordinated, 48-hour campaign beginning on July 2 at 6:00am GMT, with one objective and one objective only: to get the word out about the Zionist danger — with an emphasis on the real issues, especially 9/11 — to as many people as possible, in a single, coordinated blitzkrieg.

Granted, she admitted that 99 percent of the US congress does not serve US interests. But so what?

That both houses of the US legislature are completely controlled byIsrael-firsters has been patently obvious for years: one simply has to look at the outrageouslyone-sidedvoting results on any congressional decision with a bearing on Israel; or, even better, read former congressman Paul Findley’s book — written all the way back in 1985 — “They Dare to Speak Out”.

Aside from this single admission — hastily seized upon as proof of her authenticity — McKinney hardly ever, if at all, used the words ‘Jewish’ or ‘Zionist’ to describe the criminal network that now wields total control over the US political system. Rather, she stuck to the same old euphemisms — “certain groups” and “special interests” — without once naming names.

“These parties [Republican and Democrat] have been completely taken over by special interests,” McKinney says in her first interview with TIU’s Ognir on April 30. “Now is the time for those of us who are not tied to these special interests to step forward.”

Come on, Cynthia — how can we “step forward” against them when we can’t even call them by name?

It was on 9/11, though, that McKinney most revealed her true colors. Besides repeating unhelpful mantras (“the American people haven’t been told the truth”), shenever once mentioned the obvious culprit, the Israeli Mossad (working in tandem with Zionist agents inside the US governmentand intelligence agencies), despite the mountains of evidence that support this conclusion.

(In fact, while calling for an independent investigation of the attacks, she never even stated decisively that 9/11 was a false-flag operation, let alone an Israeli-directed one.)

Let’s face it: by the standards that have been rigorously applied to all other would-be ‘truth-tellers’ — from liars Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky to Alex Jones — McKinney completelyfailed to deliveronall the mostpressing issues.

Those issues include: Zionist infiltration and control not only of the three branches of US government, but also infiltration of global media, financial, academic and medical institutions; the illegitimacy and criminality of the Jewish garrison-state of Israel, including Israel’s historical use of false-flag terror operations such as the 1967 attack against the USS Liberty and 9/11; and — the mother of all red lines — the truth behind recent historical events, especially as it pertains to the Second World War.

That’s the “pure play” — and at this late date, nothing less will suffice.

While McKinney admits the criminality of Israel’s policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians (another fact glaringly obvious for decades), she totally avoids the rest — the core, red-line issues — like the plague.

(It should be added that we have nothing against McKinney personally. In fact, we were, until recently, avid supporters of the congresswoman based on her earlier public statements on 9/11 and other issues. It was only with the greatest disappointment that we heard her meticulouslyavoid these core issues in her recent appearances.)

We are extremely sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, who continue to suffer under a three-year-old internationally sanctioned embargo because of their choice to democratically elect resistance faction Hamas. We entirely support the Palestinian resistance against the criminal garrison-state of Israel, armed or otherwise.

But the “Free Gaza” campaign, for which McKinney has become a spokesperson, is a controlled-opposition op. They’re setting McKinney up to become America’s answer to the UK’s George Galloway — who, it should be remembered, led a similar, highly-publicized Gaza campaign earlier this year (no doubt to maintain his anti-Zionist credibility).

If McKinney wants to lead the growing anti-Zionist movement, or become a spokesperson for it, she has to give us much, much more. She has to broach the above red-line issues head-on, without reservation or recourse to euphemism.

Otherwise, if we’re not careful, we’ll end up giving her undeserved credibility within the movement — while getting absolutely nothing in return.

(Such a misstep would make us vulnerable to one of two possible damaging scenarios: McKinney could, in future, make outlandish public statements aimed at discrediting the entire movement; or she could end up Ron Pauling us, i.e., letting us down at a decisive moment by abruptly backtracking on earlier positions.)

Remember: the root cause of Palestinian suffering is Zionist control not just of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but of national governments and ‘multilateral’ institutions like the UN — everything else is just diversion.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO STRIKE, STRIKE HARD

So instead of mobilizing our combined resources behind the theatre unfolding in the eastern Mediterranean, let’s strike them where the weakest: on Israel’s central role in the 9/11 attacks.

Tens of thousands of us — if not hundreds of thousands — have woken up to the Zionist threat. With these numbers, we now have the resources to mount an online awareness campaign capable of delivering a potentially mortal blow.

Therefore, we propose a coordinated, 48-hour campaign beginning on July 2 at 6:00am GMT, with one objective and one objective only: to get the word out about the Zionist danger — with an emphasis on the real issues, especially 9/11 — to as many people as possible, in a single, coordinated blitzkrieg.

(The 9/11 issue is of double importance now, because it looks like they are preparing to let the 9/11 crimes go public in a ‘controlled burn’ operation intended to focus blame solely on Bush/Cheney. We have the ability to preempt this, however, by raising sufficient levels of awareness — right now — about Israel’s central role in the attacks.)

Not that the information wasn’t already available — we just summarizedit, provided links to mainstream news sources and sent the story out to more than 1500 email addresses, including public officials, law enforcement agencies and media organizations mainstream and alternative, among others.

The mini-campaign resulted in an unexpected number of responses (although most were form letters) and an unprecedented number of article reads (7000 within the first 24 hours and still climbing) on the site. It was also quickly trackbacked on a number of high-profile ‘alternative’ websites, including rense.com, whatreallyhappened.com and — ironically — Ron Paul’s official website. It even appeared — almost instantly — in a French translation (below).http://korbo.info/?p=2055

In short, ADL liar Adam Pearlman received a thorough outing across the Internet — one from which he will not likely recover soon.

(The excellent ‘Israel did 9/11’ document by ZionCrimeFactory did even better. After being initially posted on Rense.com in early May, the latest Google search for the document yields results in the thousands.)

The point is, if we managed to generate thislevel of awareness with one day of work and with extremely few resources, imagine the blowthat could be delivered if every one of us in the online anti-Zionist movement mobilized at the exact same time.

MAKE IT COUNT

Such a move will require effort. Everyone must be prepared to camp out at their computers for a sustained 48-hour period. But if there was ever a good reason to take a day or two off, this is it.

We’ll probably have only one chance to mount a serious campaign, so we have to do it right. In order to achieve the desired effect, such a campaign requires two absolutely fundamental elements, the importance of which cannot be overstated. One is timing, the other focus.

Firstly, timing. The enemy is no doubt monitoring, or at least attempting to monitor, all communications within the legitimate (i.e., uncompromised) online anti-Zionist movement. That means that as soon as the call for simultaneous, collective action goes out, they will begin taking steps to preempt it.

It is impossible to predict exactly what those steps will be. However, given the potential threat such an action would represent to them, it could very well involve blocking local communications or neutralizing websites.

(This is, if fact, precisely what happened to us when we mass emailed the Adam Ghadan story. Only the first ten percent of our mails were successfully sent, with the latter 90 percent eventually generating delivery-failure notices. Someone, somewhere quickly ascertained what was going on and took steps to prevent the bulk of mails from being delivered.)

Therefore, the campaign must be as coordinated as possible. Everyone involved, whatever country they’re in, must be prepared to commence operations at roughly the same time, keeping in mind time-zone differences.

Secondly, focus. Along with being simultaneous, the attack must hone in on their weakest links — chiefly, evidence of Israel’s leading role in 9/11 — and hammer them without mercy.

There’s no time for ambiguous, McKinney-like euphemisms about the control exerted by ‘certain groups’ and ‘special interests.’ We have to go for the jugular, and we have to do it now.

We recommend sticking to choice documents as opposed to much, much heavieraudio and video files. Documents can be easily sentviaemail, while audio and video files are easily shut down at the source, as often happens on YouTube.

The above are only recommendations. Feel free to send/post any other relevantdocuments or links you see fit. But remember: it is essential to stay on target; keep it focused on the above-mentioned core issues. We’ll lose potential converts if we dilute the message with side issues.

Where to send it:

National military, law enforcement agencies

Media institutions, mainstream and alternative

Academic, scientific institutions

Businesses (especially small-to-medium sized ones)

Multilateral institutions

Novelty sites (high-traffic gaming, entertainment sites)

For bulk emailing, we recommend using sendmail on a BSD Unix box with an email-list manager, which we have found to be the fastest and most reliable means of sending emails out in mass quantities.

Our campaign should not, however, be limited to email. Websites and blogs — the higher the exposure, the better — should also be riddled with posts containing the same information.

For posting, we recommend public forums devoted to political issues, along with ‘mainstream’ (i.e., compromised) ‘9/11 truth’ websites. But we shouldn’t stop there — if we can mobilize only 10,000 people to participate, we could potentially saturate thousands of major websites withthe truth.

There are a number of additional means of delivery, along with email and posts online, that can be utilized. These include public chat networks, Twitter, and even fax and telephone. Don’t hesitate to use these means, too, to get the word out.

If you’re bilingual, you would probably best serve the cause by translating relevant documents and mailing/posting them to/at similar forums in other languages. By this simple actalone, one could potentially open up enormous new veins of awareness outside the English-speaking world.

Finally, be sure to keep allresponses you receive, personal (in a best-case scenario) or automated. These can later serve as evidence that the recipients, be they individuals or institutions, were officiallyinformed of the facts.

What not to do:

The global anti-Zionist movement does not condone racism. Nor does it condone violence against anyone not involved in criminality, be they Jewish or otherwise. As Daryl Bradford Smith has said from the beginning, this movement targets criminals.

So don’t include anything that could be deemed racist or ‘anti-Semitic’. After all, this is exactly what they want: to equate criticism of Zionism or Talmudic Judaism with racial hatred.

Bad language should not be used in general, and certainly not while you’re trying to inform the public of a clear and present danger. We’re all angry, but bad language — even within the context of intelligent discourse — tends to alienate the many good people we want fighting with us.

Finally, let’s not allow personal animosities to thwart our campaign — the stakes are way, way too high not to work together. In order to achieve our desired effect, everyone in the movement has to participate.

Of course, that’s not to say that the traitors in our midst won’t try to stop us. In fact, our campaign might even force some of them into showing their hand.

CONCLUSION

Every interview and audio file devoted to the subject of criminal Zionism ends with the same question: “What can we do about it?” Here’s a chance for us to do something — all of together, at exactly the same time — and bring the fight to the enemy.

We’ve been on the defensive for too long; in danger of becoming little more than spectators to this unfolding global catastrophe. So let’s hit them hard — right now — and level out the playing field.

What will come afterwards is anyone’s guess. In their worst-case-scenario, they might be prepared to shut down the Internet altogether; or use our campaign as an excuse to launch Internet2. Irregardless, a bold strike like the one proposed here can be expected to force their hand and multiply the chance for error on their part.

(Remember: the more pressure we apply — on the real issues — the more slip-ups they’ll make. We even suspect that ‘Al-Qaeda spokesman’ Adam Ghadan’s recent acknowledgement of his Jewish ancestry came as a direct response to the ubiquity online of the ‘Israel did 9/11’ document.)

Ultimately, the only alternative is sitting back; sitting back and letting them neutralize us one by one — on their terms and at their convenience. A website here, an alternative radio there…until there’s no one left telling the truth.

A combination of fortunate circumstances — not least of which being the enemy’s own arrogance — has already put them in the crosshairs.

‘Proud Hungarians must prepare for war against the Jews’
Haaretz (Israel)
June 2, 2009″Given our current situation, anti-Semitism is not just our right, but it is the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover, and we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews.”

This quote appeared in a newsletter published by an organization calling itself “The trade union of Hungarian police officers prepared for action”.

Hungarian law allows police officers to organize in trade unions of their own. The union — by its own definition — aims to protect the professional interests of those unionized, and not to partake in political activity.

However, the law does not prevent the union from distributing a newsletter, the content of which is at the discretion of its editor, and its editor alone.

The editor of the “prepared for action” union, Judit Szima (who also serves as the secretary-general of the union) didn’t see anything wrong with the content of the article quoted above. It is little wonder, given the fact that the union has signed a cooperation agreement with the radical right wing Hungarian party “Jobbik” (Movement for better Hungary) which backs and operates the extremist paramilitary movement “Hungarian Guard” and warns against the “gypsy crime” — in effect trying to terrorize Hungary’s gypsy community, as well as its Jewish community or anyone else they don’t like.

[Let’s not forget that the current government in Tel Aviv could also be described as ‘radical right wing’ and ‘extremist.’ As for the lumping together of Jews and Gypsies as historical co-victims, this sounds like a ruse: I don’t hear anyone complaining about Gypsies ‘buying out Manhattan, Poland, Hungary’ (see below) — 800]

Szima is the Jobbik candidate in the upcoming election for the European Union parliament, to be held June 7. [One has to wonder, though, why Szima believes the EU parliament is any more free of Zionist control than her own government — 800]

She has been removed from her post in the police force ahead of the election, but continues to serve as the union’s secretary general.

The author of the article, which focuses on the duty of every Hungarian patriot to adopt anti-Semitism, did not stop at one.

The following issue of the newsletter included another of his articles, in which he argued “I am in favor of peaceful solutions. But a peaceful solution could only be implemented if our Zionist government were to relocate to Tel Aviv, as it is them who are calling for war.”

“A crumbling country, torn apart by Hungarian-Gypsy civil war, could easily be claimed by the rich Jews,” the article went on to say. “That is why we should expect a Hungarian-Gypsy civil war, fomented by Jews as they rub their hands together with pleasure.”

This article elicited an official complaint filed with the prosecution, arguing that it contained incitement against minority groups. The prosecution rejected the complaint, stating that it did not call for violence against Jews or Gypsies, but rather called to defend against these groups’ probable attack.

The “prepared for action” union affair is a testament to the state of racist incitement and anti-Semitism in Hungary. It has emerged that the union boasts more than 4,000 members, some 10 percent of the total number of police officers in Hungary. It is believed that in Budapest, the capital, the numbers are higher. This is not to say that all the union members harbor the same racist views held by its primary spokespeople and leaders — in most cases members join the union simply to protect their personal rights — but the Hungarian government and justice system can’t, or won’t, take action to separate the union’s lawful protection of policemen’s rights and its detestable political activities.

For example, after the recent resignation of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, one of the candidates for the post was Gyorgy Suranyi, formerly the governor of the Hungarian Central Bank, a brilliant economist, and (unfortunately) a Jew.

The extreme right Hungarian Justice and Life party published on the front page of its newsletter a picture of Suranyi’s face inside a yellow star of David (reminiscent of the yellow patch from the days of Fascism) with the following caption: “Suranyi is actually the candidate backed by the elderly [Israeli President] Shimon Peres. The takeover deal announced by the Israeli leader has now reached the stage in which a Jewish Hungarian prime minister is required. The deal has been in the works for many months.” (The Forum referred to the unfortunate remark made by Peres recently, when he described the success of Israel’s economy by saying “we are buying out Manhattan, Poland, Hungary…”)

[In light of Peres’ candor, then, it would appear that allegations made by this ‘extreme right’ party regarding the Jewish financial takeover of Hungary are, in fact, true — 800]

One of the two main reasons for the Hungarian authorities’ failure in the face of racism and anti-Semitism is the fact that there are many right-wing elements within the government, who secretly or outright support the racist views and refuse to battle their perpetrators seriously. The other reason is that during the regime change of the 90s, lawmakers viewed freedom of speech and expression as an absolute priority [as if this were a bad thing — 800], and to this day don’t provide protection to the victims of the misuse of this freedom.

Even the (Jewish-run) mainstream media now admits that ‘Adam Ghadan’ — an ‘Al-Qaeda’ spokesman known for making absurd calls-to-arms against ‘infidels’ and ‘Zio-Crusaders’ — is, in fact, the grandson of a prominent board member of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League:The Los Angeles Times: ‘Gadahn’s grandfather was Dr. Carl K. Pearlman, a well-known Orange County urologist who died in 1998.’

Haaretz: ‘Gadahn’s grandfather was well-known urologist Carl Pearlman, an active member of the Jewish community in Orange County California.’

The Orange County Register (2006): Carl Pearlman’s activism included ‘serving as the first local chairman of the Bonds for Israel campaign and then as chairman of the United Jewish Welfare Fund. He was on the board of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)…’

For the complete text of these articles (along with one from CNN that neglects to mention the name ‘Pearlman’ once), READ MORE.

American Al-Qaeda member Adam Gadahn tells of Jewish roots in video
The Los Angeles Times
June 14, 2009

Adam Gadahn, a Southern California-raised man self-described as American Al-Qaeda has released a new video in which he talks about his Jewish ancestry.

Gadahn, known as “Azzam the American”, lived in Garden Grove in the 1990s after growing up on a goat farm in rural Riverside County. The FBI said he converted to Islam as a youth, left the United States around 1998 and later was associated with senior Al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaida in Pakistan and attended training camps in Afghanistan.

In the new video, obtained by CNN, Gadahn talks about his background. “Let me here tell you something about myself and my biography, in which there is a benefit and a lesson,” Gadahn said. “Your speaker has Jews in his ancestry, the last of whom was his grandfather.”

Gadahn’s grandfather was Dr. Carl K. Pearlman, a well-known Orange County urologist who died in 1998. Pearlman, who was Jewish, received a community-service award in 1985 from the Orange County chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, which has since changed its name to the National Conference for Community and Justice, for his work in the expansion of St. Joseph Hospital in Orange.

In the video, Gadahn refers to his grandfather, saying he was “a zealous supporter of the usurper entity, and a prominent member of a number of Zionist hate organizations. … He used to repeat to me what he claimed are the virtues of this entity and encouraged me to visit it, specifically the city of Tel Aviv, where relatives of ours live,” he said.

American Al-Qaida member acknowledges his Jewish roots
Haaretz (Israel)
June 14, 2009

An American Al-Qaida member has for the first time acknowledged his Jewish ancestry, in an official video message released over the weekend by the international terrorist network.

Adam Yahiye Gadahn — who also goes by the name Azzam the American — declared his roots in a video which surfaced on Saturday, using the opportunity to urge Muslims to use “our weapons, funds and Jihad against the Jews and their allies everywhere.”

“Let me here tell you something about myself and my biography, in which there is a benefit and a lesson,” Gadahn says in the video, speaking in Arabic with English subtitles. “Your speaker has Jews in his ancestry, the last of whom was his grandfather.”

Gadahn, 30, was raised in rural California and converted to Islam in the mid-1990s, when he moved to Pakistan and joined Al-Qaida. In 2006, the United States has charged him with treason and with providing material support to Al-Qaida. The FBI has placed him on its most wanted list and is offering a $1 million reward for his capture.

In the video, Gadahn describes his grandfather as a “Zionist” and “zealous supporter of the usurper entity, and a prominent member of a number of Zionist hate organizations… He used to repeat to me what he claimed are the virtues of this entity and encouraged me to visit [Israel], specifically the city of Tel Aviv, where relatives of ours live.”

Gadahn’s grandfather was well-known urologist Carl Pearlman, an active member of the Jewish community in Orange County California.

Gadahn says that despite his grandfather’s attempt to impart the ideology, he could never embrace “the Jews’ rape of Muslim Palestine.”

How can a person with an ounce of self-respect possibly stand in the ranks of criminals and killers who have no morals, no mercy, no humanity and indeed, no honor?” Gadahn says of Zionism. “Isn’t it shameful enough for a person to carry the citizenship of America, the symbol of oppression and tyranny and advocate of terror in the world?”

Although Gadahn’s Jewish roots have been reported before in the media, terrorism analyst Laura Mansfield told CNN that this was the first official acknowledgement. According to Mansfield, the video was probably taped in spring, prior to U.S. President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world in Cairo

The above article can be found at:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092707.html Here’s another article on the same subject by CNN, which, while neglecting to mention the name ‘Pearlman’ once, provides what now unfortunately passes for ‘analysis’:

American al-Qaeda member acknowledges Jewish ancestry
CNN
June 13, 2009

In a new anti-Israel, anti-U.S. video, an American al Qaeda member makes reference to his Jewish ancestry for the first time in an official al-Qaeda message.

In the video, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American, discusses his roots as he castigates U.S. policies and deplores Israel’s offensive in Gaza that started in late December 2008 and continued into January. [This is an obvious device aimed at associating sympathy for the besieged Palestinians with the evil ‘Al-Qaeda,’ perpetrators of the heinous 9/11 attacks, in the bemused mind of the average American — 800]

“Let me here tell you something about myself and my biography, in which there is a benefit and a lesson,” Gadahn says, as he elicits support from his fellow Muslims for “our weapons, funds and Jihad against the Jews and their allies everywhere.”

“Your speaker has Jews in his ancestry, the last of whom was his grandfather,” he says.

Growing up in rural California, Gadahn embraced Islam in the mid-1990s, moved to Pakistan and has appeared in al Qaeda videos before.

He was indicted in the United States in 2006 on charges of treason and material support to al-Qaeda, according to the FBI. Gadahn is on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, with a reward of up to $1 million leading to his capture. FBI records show Gadahn’s date of birth as September 1, 1978.

The video — in which Gadahn speaks Arabic, with English subtitles — surfaced on Saturday. This account is based on an English transcript provided by As-Sahab Media, the media production company used by al Qaeda.

Gadahn’s Jewish ancestry has been reported in the news media. But terrorism analyst Laura Mansfield says it is the first time Gadahn acknowledged his Jewish ancestry in an official al Qaeda message.

Gadahn says his grandfather was a “Zionist” and “a zealous supporter of the usurper entity, and a prominent member of a number of Zionist hate organizations.”

“He used to repeat to me what he claimed are the virtues of this entity and encouraged me to visit it, specifically the city of Tel Aviv, where relatives of ours live,” says Gadahn, referring to Israel.

He says his grandfather gave him a book by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “A Place Among the Nations” — in which the “rabid Zionist” sets out “feeble arguments and unmasked lies to justify the Jews’ rape of Muslim Palestine.”

But Gadahn says that despite his youth at the time, he didn’t heed his grandfather’s words.

“How can a person with an ounce of self-respect possibly stand in the ranks of criminals and killers who have no morals, no mercy, no humanity and indeed, no honor?” he says in reference to Zionists and Israel.

“Isn’t it shameful enough for a person to carry the citizenship of America, the symbol of oppression and tyranny and advocate of terror in the world?”

Mansfield thinks the video may have been made between late April and mid-May, before President Obama’s speech in Cairo, Egypt, addressing U.S. relations with Muslims.

Specifically mentioning the Gaza offensive and citing other hot spots such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Somalia, where the “Zio-Crusader alliance” is fighting his “brothers,” he says “this open-faced aggression” comes as Obama has risen to power. [By stressing the notion of a ‘Zio-Crusader alliance,’ Gadahn — in actuality a Mossad operative — is simply trying to make Al-Qaeda appear as a common enemy to both Christians and Jews, thus cementing the unholy alliance between badly misled ‘Christian Zionists’ and Israel — 800]

He scorns Obama’s statements in his inaugural address and in Turkey that America isn’t and won’t be at war with Islam, and “other deceptive, false and sugarcoated words of endearment and respect.” He says Obama’s language is similar to words Netanyahu uttered in the Knesset in 1996.

Gadahn also backs the idea of targeting “Zio-Crusader” interests anywhere in the world, not just “within Palestine.”

The above article can be found at:http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/13/american.qaeda.message/ Finally, note this September 2006 article from the Orange County Register — the first of three parts — which explicitly states that Dr. Carl K. Pearlman was not only ‘active in the Jewish community,’ but a card-carrying board member of the Jewish ADL:

Radical conversion
The Orange County Register
September 24, 2006

SANTA ANA — When Dr. Donald Martin took over as chief of the urology department at Orange County General Hospital in 1969, he felt lucky.

He inherited the job from Dr. Carl K. Pearlman, then 60, a highly respected doctor who was gracious and generous to a young man of 39.

Martin came to know Pearlman as a good doctor, a social activist, and a mentor to many young men training in medicine. So he wasn’t surprised in the mid-1990s when Pearlman told him he was taking in his grandson.

“Carl was very sweet,” Martin recalled. “He said, ‘He’s having some problems, so I’ll take him under my roof, under my wing.'”

Pearlman died in 1998, and Martin didn’t think about his friend’s confidence until six years later.

That’s when, in May 2004, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Pearlman’s grandson, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, was part of a group of Islamic fundamentalists being sought by the FBI for questioning because of ties to al-Qaida. Gadahn was “armed and dangerous,” the FBI said.

Martin was astonished to learn that a young man related to Pearlman, a Jew who won a humanitarian award for promoting peace among religions, could be part of one of the fiercest anti-Semitic terror organizations in the world. A family known for its love of social tolerance, education and the arts suddenly had to answer for violence-spewing videos featuring Gadahn, now known as “Azzam the American,” an angry and articulate voice calling for the streets of his own country “to run red with blood.”

“I often think of how heartbroken he’d be,” Martin said of his old friend. “To have this happen to him would have been very painful. It’s unbelievable.” The three generations of Pearlmans — Carl Pearlman, his son, Phil, and grandson, Adam — were intelligent men who lived their lives according to their deeply held convictions. They loved music, were described as leaders, and all sought change in the world.

But the similarities end there. Because father to son, there was not only rebellion against the elder, as might be expected, but an extreme reaction to birthright and, ultimately, the rejection of traditional society.

Carl Pearlman, a leading Orange County doctor who championed new medical technologies, had a son who changed his name to Seth Gadahn and opted to live off the land.

Seth Gadahn’s son, Adam, home-schooled in the family’s wooden shack and raised in rural isolation, moved away from his family as a teenager and settled into his grandfather’s Santa Ana home, discovering the Internet and Islam. He converted at a Garden Grove mosque in 1995 and fell in with a group of Islamic fundamentalists.

Adam Gadahn was described as a quiet and shy boy who came from a good family. Now 28, he’s ranting righteously as propaganda minister for Osama bin Laden.

Like many life stories with such contrasts, Adam Gadahn’s is marked by a quest for meaning and, at least in the beginning, hope.

Urban pioneers

Carl Pearlman, his wife, Agnes, and two small children arrived in Santa Ana in 1948 from the East Coast.

They were urban pioneers in Orange County, then a sleepy agricultural area defined by its fruit groves and pretty, pristine beaches. They took part in the activities cherished by the millions who were moving to California — a life lived outdoors, including swimming in a backyard pool, golf and bike riding.

But the Pearlmans pushed this utopian new lifestyle further than most, and were bent on improving the common good, whether through arts education, helping the poor or promoting good health.

This lifestyle extended from the Orange County coast to the California mountains. From the early 1950s, the Pearlmans were some of the first board members of what was then called the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, a summer academy in a small, picturesque town in the San Jacinto Mountains. There, in 1957, the family built a cabin designed by John Lautner, an early disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright’s and an important contemporary architect.

Lautner believed that human spaces must intersect with nature, and is known for landmarks from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. Now showcased as “the Pearlman cabin” among Lautner’s body of work, it is “a cross between a log cabin and a treehouse,” as one Lautner book says, a circular building that lies open to a beautiful, panoramic view of snow-capped Tahquitz Peak.

Agnes Pearlman was a fine pianist, and her baby grand piano commands a presence in front of the huge windows, signifying the importance of music to the family. Carl Pearlman played the violin, practicing daily until the age of 88. Their children, Phil and his sister Nancy, took part in the programs at the Idyllwild school, a 250-acre campus just down the road from the Pearlman cabin.

From the start, the school attracted legendary artists. Ansel Adams taught photography classes to kids and their parents from 1958 to 1960, and Meredith Willson was guest composer in 1949, writing parts of “The Music Man” there. Pete Seeger, guitar in hand, often led singalongs around the evening campfires after his folk music classes from 1957 to 1963.

Agnes Pearlman, now 83 and still living in the family’s modest Santa Ana home, remains connected to the school, which has become the Idyllwild Arts Academy, a private college-preparatory and prestigious year-round boarding school. Most recently, she sent money to the school for its Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

A musical background

The passion for music was also reflected in Santa Ana, and Carl Pearlman was proud to say that the Orange County Philharmonic Society was started in his living room in the early 1950s. Nancy and Phil both graduated from Brickerward Preparatory, a now-defunct Orange County school that stressed arts education.

The Pearlmans held lively musical evenings for their friends, Carl on violin and Agnes on piano, sitting on a platform in their large living room.

They played classical music — Vivaldi, Schubert, Dvorak — but would finish with Carl’s favorites, Rodgers and Hammerstein show tunes. Carl’s partner, Dr. J. Bernard Miller, loved these evenings and said he always requested the song “Mame” from the musical of the same name.

The couple’s children inherited this love of music, a passion that seems coupled with a sense of leadership. While attending UC Irvine in the mid-1960s, Phil Pearlman brought the latest bands to campus, and friends thought he would become a music promoter.

A guitar player, Phil Pearlman started a psychedelic band called Beat of the Earth, and its 1967 recording is a cult favorite often bootlegged by aficionados. Original recordings command $400 to $500.

Reflected in the third generation, Adam Gadahn had his own passion for music. It played out in a rebellious teenage phase as a love for demonic heavy metal, and he once wrote for a death-metal online magazine called Xenocide.

In a separate essay he penned about becoming a Muslim, Adam Gadahn told of his brief obsession with the genre, which he said “rightfully” alarmed his family.

Now, the boy who grew up with his grandfather’s classical music and his father’s 1960s sounds probably doesn’t listen to music at all.

Osama bin Laden considers music “the flute of the devil” and covers his ears when he hears it, according to “The Looming Tower,” a book about the al-Qaida leader by Lawrence Wright.

A doctor and duffer

Ever the doctor, Carl Pearlman also loved golf and would practice it as diligently as his daily violin, using a driving net in the back yard.

Warm and funny, he loved to tell jokes while with patients, at presentations for colleagues and when lecturing during 20 years of volunteer teaching at UC Irvine.

Carl Pearlman was a leader in the early medical associations and hospitals that sprouted up around the county’s growing population in the 1950s and ’60s. During his 50-year career, he was chief of staff at Orange County General Hospital, chief of staff at Santa Ana Community Hospital (now Western Medical Center) and chairman of the first expansion fund for St. Joseph Hospital.

“He had an outstanding reputation when he was in practice,” said Dr. Frank Amato, a former president of the Orange County Medical Association. “He was a good physician.”

He was an activist in the early medical community, opposed to hospitals operating for profit and disgusted that the county facility was “nothing but a poor farm” when he arrived in 1949. Carl Pearlman offered his services for free when the parents of one of his patients, a 17-year-old Villa Park girl, couldn’t afford a kidney transplant for their daughter in 1969.

Pearlman’s friend, Dr. Donald Martin, was on the team of this historic local event, the county’s first kidney transplant. Colleagues remember Pearlman as a champion of new medical technologies and one of the few doctors who were not threatened when the University of California system decided to create a teaching hospital in Orange County in the late 1960s, Martin said.

Community leader

Pearlman’s activism included devoting time to the YMCA, serving as the first local chairman of the Bonds for Israel campaign and then as chairman of the United Jewish Welfare Fund.

He was on the board of the Anti-Defamation League [!!!] and in 1985 was honored with a humanitarian award by the Orange County chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, now called the National Conference for Community and Justice.

Pearlman’s friends said he didn’t practice his religion by, say, belonging to a synagogue, and Agnes Pearlman came from a Christian background.

Holidays were social times, and Pearlman’s partner, Miller, remembers the Pearlmans’ annual Christmas party as one to look forward to every year. Their children were raised to think freely about religion, and Nancy Pearlman has said they were agnostics.

Although Pearlman’s colleagues described him as “completely secular,” they also recalled that he was a supporter of Israel, which was created just about the time the Pearlmans moved to their home in Santa Ana’s Floral Park neighborhood.

“In our conversations, he had a very strong feeling for Israel,” said Dr. Mel Singer, a pediatric cardiologist in Orange. “He felt very sincerely and deeply that he wanted that country to survive and make peace with the Arab nations around it.”

A grandson’s conversion

By the mid-1990s, about the time Pearlman took his grandson into his home, the doctor was already joking about his death. He was adamant that he didn’t want a service but that he wanted to be buried in Riverside National Cemetery, so the family could wave at him as they drove to the cabin in Idyllwild.

He probably knew of Adam Gadahn’s conversion to Islam, which occurred in 1995. But it’s not known how the grandfather felt about Adam’s new beliefs. Family members declined to comment for this story, although Nancy Pearlman confirmed most details.

Adam Gadahn had already taken one trip to Pakistan by the time of his grandfather’s death on Oct. 18, 1998, at the age of 90. He returned to the United States and was with the family when his grandfather died. Soon thereafter, he left for Pakistan. It’s believed he has never returned to America.

On the third anniversary of 9/11 in 2004, Adam Gadahn, his face partly covered in a black scarf, warned America and Britain via video that it was time for “either pragmatic surrender or a protracted, painful war.”

“We love peace, but peace on our terms, peace laid down by Islam, not the so-called peace of occupiers and dictators,” said Gadahn, punctuating his words with a finger pointed at the camera and adding that the followers of Osama bin Laden “love nothing better than the heat of battle, the echo of explosions and slitting the throats of the infidels.” [Does anyone take this stuff seriously? — 800]

Fiery speech from the grandson of a man who left behind a legacy built on justice, tolerance and helping the oppressed. In a little red notebook he always carried with him, Pearlman also left behind some of his favorite sayings, quotes that reinforced his beliefs. Among those is this one by Benjamin Franklin:

No matter what your religious orientations, one thing’s for certain: the criminal Jewish network, now well on its way towards finalizing its New World Order project, intends to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem — imminently — for its anticipated Jewish ‘Messiah,’ or ‘Moshiach.’

The notion, which is unfortunately embraced by deeply misled ‘Christian Zionists’ (which, like ‘Judeo-Christianity,’ is a contradiction-in-terms), presupposes the destruction of the two Islamic mosques currently perched atop the temple mount — a move that would undoubtedly set the entire Muslim Middle East ablaze.

For a handful of recent media reports from a variety of sources that point to the looming reality of this scenario, READ MORE.

Along with sweet accents and sweeter food, this city is known for its graceful sweep of Spanish moss dangling from thick, gnarled trees old enough to have heard every story there is to tell.

This, however, may be a new one: An Israeli businesswoman living in nearby Bluffton, S.C., dreams of rebuilding the Third Temple in Jerusalem and causes a local stir by bringing a collection of Israeli officials to town for a conference on the future of the Jewish state.

The businesswoman, Orly Benny Davis, organized a three-day conference at the Savannah International Trade & Convention Center this week, which attracted two local Republican congressmen; leading center and right-wing American Jewish commentators, and current and former Israeli officials, including senior Likudniks and other hawks.

Though the lineup boasted many speakers opposed to making concessions to the Palestinians, it included the Atlanta-based Consulate General of Israel to the Southeast of the United States, the Savannah Jewish Federation and the local chapter of Hadassah as co-sponsors, in addition to several groups associated with rightist positions on Israel, including the Zionist Organization of America, Christians’ Israel Public Action Committee and American Friends of Likud.

At least one prominent Jewish local, Savannah’s Reform rabbi, Arnold Mark Belzer, did not attend or promote the event, titled “Convergence: Claims and Challenges of Israel’s Future in the Middle East,” saying he objected to Benny Davis’s politics. And two national leaders of the liberal group Brit Tzedek v’Shalom co-authored an op-ed in the Savannah Morning News rejecting Benny Davis’s “personal agenda, regardless of the merits of the conference sessions.”

At issue was the lead role that Benny Davis played last year in organizing a meeting that brought 1,200 people to Jerusalem to support Jewish sovereignty over the city and the dream of building the Third Temple — a project that critics say would require destroying the mosques situated on the Temple Mount. Benny Davis disagrees — the Temple Mount, she told the Forward, covers 44 acres, enough space to construct the Third Temple without harming the mosques. To boot, she kicked off the conference with the wish that “the dove of peace will fly again.”

At the start of the conference, Moises Paz, executive director of the Savannah Jewish Federation, approached the Forward to engage in what he acknowledged to be a form of damage control.

“The agenda for the conference was not the Temple Mount,” he said, calling the issue irrelevant and divisive. Of course, at the same time, the conference touched on plenty of issues that could be considered divisive.

“The federation is proud to support all responsible views and opinions regarding Israel, and we had a marvelous opportunity to bring in some internationally renowned speakers, policy-makers and thinkers on the Middle East,” Paz said. “We thought that the ability to bring in these outstanding personalities outweighed any downside” and enabled citizens of Savannah “to meet firsthand some of the people that you would only read about.”

Drawing on what she described as personal connections and friendships, Benny Davis said she selected the speakers based on their smarts, not on their party or affiliation. According to Benny Davis, all the Israeli notables spoke free of charge, including Ra’anan Gissin, former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s media adviser who served in the same capacity for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; Likud lawmaker Yuval Steinitz, former chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee; Moshe Ya’alon, the former chief of staff of the Israeli military, and Giora Eiland, national security adviser to Sharon.

Also attending was Ambassador Reda Mansour, a Druze who serves as Israel’s Consul General to the Southeast; Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, and several Christian Zionists. Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes was scheduled to attend, but he took ill.

Much of the formal discussion centered on the usual fare among meetings of Jews grappling with Israel’s security: the nuclear threat from Iran, parallels between Israel’s and America’s wars against terrorism, and the struggle to improve Israel’s image in the media. A prominent theme was the notion that all concessions to the Palestinians should be halted — an idea at odds with governments in Jerusalem and Washington that still envision eventual Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank in pursuit of a two-state solution.

“We are going to have an endless war if we want to exist,” said Arieh Eldad, plastic surgeon and National Union Knesset member. Eldad called the internationally sponsored road map peace plan a “road map for Israel’s extermination.”

“The issue is the very existence of the State of Israel,” he said.

“It’s not very easy to accept, but I tell you as a physician — it’s the first step to fight the cancer,” he added, referring to the need to halt concessions. “Land for peace is the wrong medication for a misdiagnosed disease.”

Ya’alon made a similar point in his keynote address Sunday night.

“Israel shouldn’t initiate any unilateral withdrawal,” since concessions only encourage the “jihad against the West,” he said, calling the two-state solution an unclear model. “We should look for a new paradigm to allow the Palestinian people a better life and the Israeli people a more secure life.”

Asked to outline the new paradigm, Ya’alon said he didn’t have one.

Much of these remarks were greeted with quiet nods of approval. In part that’s because the audience was so small — fewer than 200 people, with fewer than 70 attending most panels.

But according to Benny Davis, they were the right people — the influential ones.

The event was billed as being “directed to members of the Jewish communities of Savannah and South Carolina’s low country, as well as others interested in the current status of Israel’s relationship with its neighbors and the United States.”

Such a high-level Israeli contingency seemed like a slightly curious development for these parts. And not just because Savannah, where even the pungent smell of paper mills has its charm, is the type of place where one goes to get away from it all. After all, the G8 recently held its summit in Savannah. But this is a small Jewish community, if an old and storied one.

Although a Jewish food festival in one of the city’s landmark squares is slated for this weekend, the community numbers just 4,000. In fact, Savannah’s Jewish federation has launched a campaign urging Jews to move here to secure the city’s Jewish future.

With feeble attendance, the convergence conference felt less town hall, more Camp David.

Still, those who made the trip felt it was well worth it.

For one thing, it made news. But it was also a networking opportunity.

Gissin said that he used the opportunity to “create a coalition of interests” and an “alliance of potential victims” among Israel and people and nations of similar values against the threat of terrorism. Klein gushed with relief over finding support for opinions he has long voiced — that concessions beget war. As these theories have borne out, he says, he has found increasing acceptance.

A few years ago, Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, the chief rabbi of Ramat Gan and one of the leading candidates for chief rabbi of Israel, ruled in a halakhic article (dealing with religious law) that the laws regarding a moser (someone who informs against or hands over another Jew) and a rodef (someone who pursues a person with the intent of killing him) do not apply to the present-day Israeli government. According to religious law, these crimes are punishable by death.

Last week, his brother, Rabbi Israel Ariel, head of the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, was arrested and held for questioning by the Jerusalem District police. Along with four of his colleagues, Ariel, 68, the head of the Sanhedrin beit din (rabbinical court) on matters of religion and state, sent a letter to the head of the Israel Defense Forces Central Command, Major General Yair Naveh, in which he accused Naveh of being a moser for signing eviction notices for 20 outpost residents.

In the letter, the Sanhedrin beit din referred the general to the law of damages in Maimonides, which states, “if he is determined to be a moser, he must be killed for fear that he will hand over others” and “it is permitted to kill the moser anywhere, even at present when we do not rule on matters of capital punishment, and whoever kills him first is praiseworthy.”

“Your successful actions at present in Judea and Samaria in defense of the country should not be forgotten,” stated the letter. “But these things cannot make up for even one outcry of a child whose father has been expelled from his home, and the tears of a woman who cries out over her husband’s expulsion.”

Ariel’s rabbinical court has already passed several controversial rulings in the past year, such as prohibiting a member of the military prosecution, who participated in a legal proceeding against outpost residents, from being summoned to the Torah. But there is no question that the focus of Ariel’s activity for years has been the Temple and awareness of the Temple.

To date, over a million people have visited the Temple Institute in Jerusalem: students, soldiers and even members of the Shin Bet security services and police, who came to learn about the philosophy of revolution to gain a better understanding of the ideology driving members of Temple Mount movements.

The late Prof. Ehud Sprinzak, an expert on extremist movements, once described Ariel as one of the three “undercover revolutionaries” in Israel. Ariel may be a revolutionary, but he is also a phenomenon.

According to any criteria, the extent of his knowledge and expertise on the history, structure, rituals and vessels of the Temple is tremendous, and few share his expertise on the practical aspects of Temple worship. Ariel also managed to bring together a team of innovative rabbis and researchers. Only recently, they finished a 10-year project that involved producing precise reconstructions of the High Priest’s garments: breastplate, vest, gold headband and blue coat with bells and pomegranates.

Rabbis, scholars, researchers, artists and other experts were all involved in the restoration work, which was based on Jewish sources: the Torah, midrashim, the Mishna, the Talmud et al. Over the years, the institute has reconstructed around 70 Temple ritual objects, including a gold candelabrum, a gold altar, a showbread table, shovels, the mizrak for collecting and pouring blood and incense. They plan to recreate another 150 such items.

Linking past and present

Temple mahzorim (holiday prayer books), Temple siddurim (daily prayer books) and books about the Temple, which are published by the Temple Institute, have become must-have items in many Religious Zionist homes, and are some of the most popular bar and bat mitzvah gifts in this sector.

This literature is rich in information, illustrations, diagrams and drawings, which bring the Temple ritual to life, and turn it into something concrete. This literature is the essence of Ariel’s work and ideology: the link between the ancient Temple and the present. For Ariel, the Temple is relevant, and the goal of the Temple Institute is to create the infrastructure and foundation to facilitate building the Third Temple.

According to Temple Institute regulations, “it is a positive commandment written in the Torah: ‘And they will make me a Temple and I will dwell among them.’ On this assumption, according to halakha, this mitzvah (commandment) applies every day, and the association will work to have this mitzvah observed as soon as possible. The Israeli government, in a statesmanlike and dignified manner, will take on this difficult assignment by itself, or through the residents of Israel.”

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner is one of Ariel’s most bitter ideological rivals. Aviner believes that the Temple’s importance supersedes everyday reality. He preaches gradual redemption, “little by little,” and strictly forbids his students from going up to the Temple Mount.

Aviner makes do with the monthly “round of gates” around the walls of the Temple Mount, as an act to foster awareness and closeness to the Temple culture. He relies on the approach of Rabbi Abraham Hacohen Kook, who determined “it is a Torah commandment that until the day of the resurrection, we are not permitted to even enter the courtyard of the Temple.”

Ariel, however, relies on other works by Kook. Take, for example, “Mishpat Kohen,” in which the rabbi wrote that sacrifices can be renewed even without a king and a prophet. The Sanhedrin beit din decision last week to purchase a flock of sheep, in the hope that conditions will be ripe by Pesach to sacrifice a Paschal Lamb on the Temple Mount, is a faithful reflection of how Ariel has behaved for many years: “We have to prepare and behave as though the Temple will be built tomorrow.” His endless search all over the world for the “red heifer,” whose ashes were used in Temple times for purification after contact with the dead, is part and parcel of this approach.

Still waiting for sappers

Ariel has never concealed from the world his cool attitude toward democracy: “When the democracy created here does what is written in the Torah, it is a good democracy, but when it does things opposed to the words of Torah, it is a bad democracy.” [As Michael A. Hoffman has pointed out, “Torah” is often used in public statements as code for “Talmud.” I suspect this is the case here — 800]

However, he emphasized that the Temple that he is working so hard to build can be built only with the consent of the people and the government — not through subversion. “There will be no shortcuts and skipping stages. It will not be possible to jump three steps at once. For every step, we will break our heads eight times in a difficult process. We will fulfill our role as though we were artillery softening up a target that is fortified and hard to capture, before the infantry goes into action. At a certain stage, the other arm, sent by the state, will arrive and use the tools that we have built and the path that we have prepared for it.”

Ariel, No. 2 on the Kach [an extremist Jewish terrorist organization] Knesset slate in the mid-1970s, served as the head of the yeshiva in Yamit during the evacuation, and was the first rabbi in Israel who called on soldiers to refuse orders. A military court sentenced him to six months of conditional arrest, and in 1983, a year after the evacuation of Yamit, he was arrested together with a group of yeshiva students from Kiryat Arba, on suspicion that they had formulated a plan to take control of the Temple Mount and entrench themselves there. Although the Jerusalem District Court exonerated them of all blame, this arrest gave rise to the Temple Institute.

Ariel told the yeshiva students, with whom he was arrested, about the Jew whom Russian authorities arrested for the crime of observing mitzvot and putting on tefillin: “‘Until now,’ said the Jew to his guards, ‘I didn’t know what a Jew was, but now that I know, I will circumcise myself.’ The man took a teaspoon, sharpened it into a knife, and circumcised himself.”

“Until now,” Ariel said to his students, “we didn’t deal seriously with issues concerning the Temple Mount, but after they accused us of conspiracy, let us … begin to study the subject of the Temple thoroughly.”

But Ariel’s special connection to the Temple Mount began much earlier. During the Six-Day War, Ariel, then a young Israel Defense Forces chaplain, was sent to guard the entrance of the Dome of the Rock, assumed to be the site of the Temple. “I was convinced,” he said later, “that the Muslim prayer hall would remain empty of people until the state sent sappers with explosives on their backs to remove the mosque.” But the sappers did not come, and Ariel is still praying for the situation on the mount to change.

The Temple Institute in Jerusalem announces the completion of the Tzitz, the High Priest’s headplate — now ready for use in the Holy Temple.

The tzitz is made of pure gold, was fashioned over the course of a more than a year by the craftsmen of the Temple Institute, and is ready to be worn by the High Priest in the rebuilt Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

The words “Holy for G-d” are engraved on the headplate, in accordance with Exodus 28:36. A short video clip presenting the tzitz can be viewed here [LINK PENDING].

Rabbi Chaim Richman, International Director of the Temple Institute, explained to Arutz-7 that until it can actually be used, the tzitz will be on view in the Institute’s permanent exhibition display, together with other vessels and priestly garments fashioned for use in the Holy Temple by the Institute.

Legal sspects: Impurity and Hekdesh

Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, Director of the Institute, explained some of the Halakhic [Jewish legal] aspects of the fashioning of the vessels for the Temple. “For one thing,” he said, “they are made in impurity — for now we are impure, and will remain impure until we are able to have a Red Heifer whose ashes can be used in the Torah-prescribed purification ceremony. If no Red Heifer is available, then the High Priest must even serve in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur in a state of impurity.”

Asked whether the fact that the vessels are dedicated for the Temple does not render them hekdesh (consecrated) and therefore forbidden for any other use, Rabbi Ariel explained, “There are two stages. First of all, we make it very clear to the donors and to the craftsmen that the ultimate purpose of these vessels is not to be used for exhibitions or the like, but rather for the fulfillment of Torah [Talmud] commandments in the Holy Temple. They must know this in advance.

However, to gain the actual status of hekdesh, we similarly make it clear that this does not happen until the vessel is actually brought in to the Temple Mount for use in the Temple. This means that someone can try on and measure the headplate, for example, without worrying that he is benefiting in any way from something that has been consecrated to the Temple.”

Menorah moves closer to Temple Mount

Rabbi Richman noted that in less than two weeks from now, on Rosh Chodesh Tevet, the famous Menorah (candelabrum) — suitable for use in the Holy Temple, familiar to visitors to the Cardo section of the Old City of Jerusalem — will be relocated to the landing of the wide staircase that leads down from the Jewish Quarter to the Western Wall. It will be protected inside the same type of glass structure that now houses it.

The new tzitz is an improvement on one made several years ago, in that it has a backpiece, in accordance with some commentators and the account of Josephus. In addition, it has a locking mechanism so that it will not slip off the Priest’s head, and can be adjusted to fit heads of different sizes. The old one will be preserved, of course as a “spare,” in keeping with the Mishnaic account that several models of various vessels were kept in the Temple, in case the need arose to replace one.

Asked what project they’re working on at present, Rabbi Richman said, “We have begun work on 120 sets of garments for ‘regular’ priests, not the High Priest. This involves special thread from India, etc. In addition, we have begun work on architectural blueprints for the Third Temple, including cost projection, modern supplies, electricity, plumbing, computers, etc.”

Bringing G-d into our world

“At present,” Rabbi Richman explained, “people are in despair, and wonder if we’re not dreaming futilely while around us our leaders are planning to give the country away. We say to them: It appears that those who went to Annapolis are the dreamers, thinking that their efforts to make peace will succeed, or that the public is with them in their efforts to give away our Jerusalem, our Temple Mount, and other national historic assets.”

“We are now approaching the holiday of Chanukah,” Rabbi Richman continued, “which is the holiday that commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple. We’re not just building beautiful vessels; we’re interested in granting G-d the dwelling place that He wants in this world; the Temple is not merely a building, but a way of bringing G-d into our lives in a very real way. And that is what we aim to do. This tzitz is G-d’s Chanukah present to us, and our Chanukah gift to the Jewish People.”

The Temple Institute in Jerusalem this week announced the completion of the solid gold crown the Bible instructs Israel’s high priest to wear while conducting his duties at the Temple, reported Israel National News.

The crown took craftsman carefully following descriptions contained in the Bible, Jewish holy texts and various historical sources more than one year to make.

The crown will be on display in Jerusalem’s Old City until the time that the Third Temple is built on the Temple Mount and Israel’s priestly caste resumes its activities there.

The Temple Institute has for decades been preparing the garments and articles needed for the day the Temple is rebuilt.

Temple Institute Director Rabbi Chaim Richman told Israel National News the next task is the completion of architectural blueprints for the Third Temple, including cost projections and detailed electrical and plumbing schematics.

A Munich-based historian Wolfgang Eggert, 46, has launched an Internet petition to demand action on powerful Jewish and Christian cults that want to instigate a nuclear holocaust to fulfill Biblical prophesy.

He thinks religious fanatics must be exposed and removed from power. He points to the Jewish Chabad Lubavitcher sect that wants to hasten Armageddon to facilitate the intervention of the Messiah. Eggert quotes a Lubavitcher rabbi who says: “The world is waiting for us to fulfill our role in preparing the world to greet Moshiach” (i.e. Messiah.).”

Their members include Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq War which began with an attack named after a Cabalist deity, “Shekinah” (“Shock and Awe”). Especially worrisome now is Chabadnik Joe Lieberman who visited Israel in March with his buddy John McCain. There is concern over Sen. Carl Levin who is Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Other prominent Orthodox Jews who might be part of this cult include Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff and former Pentagon Controller Dov Zakheim, implicated in the disappearance of “trillions” of dollars.

While the Chabad Lubavitchers are his focus, Eggert is also concerned about Christian Evangelists like Jack Van Impe and Timothy LaHaye who are close to the Bush administration. Their desired scenario includes the destruction of the al-Aqsa mosque and the restoration of the Third Temple on its site; the rising to heaven of the 144,000 Chosen Ones; the battle of Armageddon; mass death among Israeli Jews and the Final Coming of Jesus Christ.

The power of the Lubovitchers seems uncanny. (Apparently they are rich.) On March 26, 1991, the US Senate commemorated the birthday of founder Rebbe Menachem Schneerson as “National Education Day.” It also acknowledged the validity of the Talmudic “Seven Noahide Laws.” This is at a time when all Christian symbolism is being assiduously removed from society.

When Schneerson died in 1994, he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his contribution to “global morals.” According to Eggert, Schneerson taught that Jewish and Gentile souls are fundamentally different. “All Jews are good by nature…Jews are the pride of creation, the Goyim (Gentiles) are the scum.”

According to Schneerson, the Goyim still have a role in serving the Chosen ones. The Jews are the Priests while the Noahide Laws provide “a religion for the rank and file.” Quoting the Lubavitcher rabbi: “When examining the chain of frightening events [since 9-11] with a Chassidic eye, we see that the US is being pushed toward fulfilling its historic role of teaching the Sheva Mitzvos [i.e. Noahide laws] to the world.”

According to Eggert, Freemasons have always called themselves “Noachids” and incorporated the statutes into their Constitution as early as 1723.

Here is a 2004 picture of Barack Obama meeting with Rabbi Yossi Brackman, Director of the Chabad Jewish Center in Chicago [PENDING]. If you look, you can find pictures of many major politicians in the West posing with this sect. This website features more than a dozen of them. In this You Tube [PENDING] the current Chief Rabbi of the Chabad boasts of his rapport with Vladimir Putin. Eggert says Putin’s mother is Jewish, which makes him Jewish, and that President Medvedev is Jewish on both sides. It’s hard to say if they are beholden to the Chabadniks.

Eggert, who studied History and Politics at universities in Berlin and Munich, is the author of eight books on hidden history. He believes that all of modern history is influenced by a Cabalistic plot to fulfill Biblical Prophesy. However, he is careful to distinguish between the Lubavitchers and other Hasidim who think it is a crime to “force God’s hand” and “hasten the redemption.”

Nevertheless, as Eggert surveys modern history, the Lubavitchers seem to be in control.

“Every part of modern history is linked to another and in itself to Zionism, state intelligence, lodges and the like. Without the Balfour declaration, there would have been no democratic revolution in Russia and no America into World War One… We may start at any historical point (even with the American revolution or more far back Oliver Cromwell) [and] we´ll see, that the maker (or profiteer) of all this is Cabalistic Judaism. All serves their plan, to implement biblical prophecy.”

Eggert cites World Zionist VP Max Nordau’s speech at the 1903 Zionist Convention predicting “a future World War [and] peace conference where with the help of England a free and Jewish Palestine will be created.” (Eggert, “Israel’s Geheimvatikan” Vol.2, pp.21-22)

He says the Zionists sabotaged Germany in WWI (strikes, revolts) because it wouldn’t play ball on Israel. He cites a book in Hebrew, “The Historical Moment” by M. Gonzer: “We even find nations who are slow on the uptake and who find it difficult to understand certain relations unless the rebbe — that is world history — gives them some sensible bashes which makes them open their eyes.” (Israels Geheimvatikan, vol. 1, p.47.)

Eggert is approaching prominent Jewish figures personally because he believes their support is most needed. So far he has a few prominent signers but has met with some official interference. Eggert wrote to me last week:

“My attempts to find prominent signers in advance were duped. I´ve written to 120 Jewish dissidents in America and Israel; everyone got a separate personal mail. It took me three days. In the first say two or three hours of my campaign there were regularly mails coming back, with thanks or criticism or messages, that the addressee was absent. Quick answers came from Noam Chomsky and the nuclear “spy” Vanunu and a high ranking security officer of the United Nations ordered all my books — but then, immediately after and within one moment all resonance stopped. And since then I haven’t received any more answers, although I kept on sending one mail after the other. I think that some guys are blocking or filtering my mailbox.”

Conclusion

As we weather the election hurricane season, it is useful to remember that the same people control both parties. Sarah Palin is a distraction. A confection. A cosmetic blush. Her convention speech was written by one of George W’s stable of speech writers. She was vetted and approved by AIPAC and Rabbi Joe Lieberman. Rothschild cut-out George Soros funds and controls Obama.

That’s why I’ll be signing Wolfgang Eggert’s petition. It’s important that they know we aren’t all rubes, mesmerized by their tired old shell game.

The First World Conference of the Noahide Nations is underway in Florida.

The conference is taking place at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport Hilton Hotel, and is designed to bring Jews and Noahides together. The organizers stated that for this purpose, the location was specifically chosen for its proximity to a large Jewish populace.

The conference speakers include Israe lNational Radio (INR) director Yishai Fleisher, speaking on “INR Support for the Future of the Noahide Movement,” and show host Rabbis Chaim Richman, and other rabbinic scholars.

The four-day event features workshops and symposiums led by Jewish and Noahide scholars in the fields of Torah [Talmud] study, science, history and government.

Conference organizer Ray Pettersen, of the Dallas-based Noahide Nations, said, “Our world is plagued with violence and diminishing human dignity. Yet, we are also blessed with an unprecedented outpouring of Torah knowledge that is both timeless and even technological. That knowledge, coupled with a heightened sense of the need for community is the underlying theme of this summer’s conference.”

On display at the conference is what the conference organizers call the “Golden Crown of the High Priest of the Third Temple.” The crown is actually a headplate known as the Tzitz, fashioned out of pure gold by the Temple Institute in the Old City of Jerusalem and completed last December. The Temple Institute stated at the time that the Tzitz “is ready to be worn by the High Priest in the rebuilt Holy Temple in Jerusalem.” The words “Holy for G-d” are engraved on the headplate, in accordance with Exodus 28:36.

Last month, Rabbi Yaakov Cohen, Sheikh Abdaal Salaam and Reverend Michael Kroop addressed a Hebrew University audience on the topic of how the Seven Noahide Laws can help bring world peace. Rabbi Cohen, of The Institute of Noahide Code, who organized the conference, said the goal was to “use the Noahide laws as a starting point for dialogue between representatives of different traditions.”

The seven Noahide laws, by which Gentiles are bound according to Torah law and which are being accepted by increasing numbers of non-Jews, are the following:

1. Belief in one G-d; no idol worship
2. Respecting G-d: Do not blaspheme His Name
3. Respect for human life: Do not murder
4. Respect for family: Do not commit immoral sexual acts
5. Respect for others’ rights: Do not steal
6. Creation of a judicial system
7. Respect All Creatures: Do not eat live animals or be cruel to them

At the Florida conference, Pettersen presented Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight with the Zedekah Award for his charitable efforts and public support for the State of Israel, and Vendyl Jones received the Noah Award for his lifetime of work in spreading Torah and the Seven Laws of Noach. Other speakers include Rabbis Y. Hollander, Joel Bakst, and Michael Katz, as well as Dr. Andrew Goldfinger, Judge Rabbi Sander Goldberg, Jim Long, and more.

Wearing a turban and a light blue tunic threaded with silver, a man stands in a workshop in Jerusalem’s Old City beside spools of white thread affixed to sewing machines. A painting of high priests performing an animal sacrifice beside the First Temple illustrates the function of the room.

On Monday, the Temple Institute started preparing to build a Third Temple on Jerusalem’s Mount Moriah, the site of the Dome of the Rock and the Aksa mosque, by inaugurating a workshop that manufactures priestly garments.

After Efrat Chief Rabbi Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, a Kohen himself, gets measured for his own set of Kohanim garments, Aviad Jeruffi, the clothing’s designer, strums “To Ascend to the Temple Mount” on his guitar in celebration.

Priestly garments have not been worn since the destruction of the Second Temple by Rome in 70 CE and cannot be functional until a Third Temple is constructed.

Kohanim, priests directly descended from Moses’s brother Aaron, are recognized by the Institute as such if their paternal grandfather observed the tradition. Today, they have special religious responsibilities; in days of yore they performed the most significant duties within the Temple.

Approximately one-third of the commandments in the Torah cannot be accomplished without a temple, including the obligations of the Kohanim.

But a Third Temple seems a flighty dream with nightmarish political implications to many, as both a shrine, the Dome of the Rock, and the Aksa mosque, Islam’s third holiest structure, currently stand on the Temple Mount.

Rabbi Yehuda Glick, director of the Temple Institute, says he assumes Muslims will be supportive when the Temple is ready to be built:

“We already have some Muslims who are secretly in touch with us,” he says.

When the Temple is rebuilt, Kohanim must wear the proper outfit to perform their obligations, Glick continues.

Each set has a turban, tunic pants and belt and is individually tailored at a cost of NIS 2,500.

“If it were a bathrobe for watching Saturday Night Live, it would not be worth it. But we’re talking about people who have a very strong yearning for working in the Beit Hamikdash [Temple],” says Glick.

Years of diligent research was needed to create the garments in conformance with Jewish law.

Special flaxen thread was imported from India and overseas travel was necessary to obtain the correct colors for the clothes, including to Istanbul, to purchase mountain worms from which the correct shade of crimson is derived.

The secret of the correct shade of blue has been lost since the destruction of the Second Temple, as the identity of chilazon, the snail from which it was extracted, was uncertain until the Ptil Tekhelet nonprofit organization identified it as the murex trunculus, aka hexaplex trunculus, the banded dye-murex found near the Mediterranean Sea.

“The Temple is not a message [just for] the Jewish people. It reunites the world all around one central prayer house. All the prophets say that at the End Times all the nations will be coming to Jerusalem and take part of building [the Temple],” Glick says.

In a stuffy basement off an Old City alleyway in Jerusalem, tailors using ancient texts as a blueprint have begun making a curious line of clothing that they hope will be worn by priests in a reconstructed Temple — the spiritual center of Judaism destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.

The project, run by a Jerusalem group called the Temple Institute, is part of an ideology that advocates making practical preparations for the rebuilding of the ancient Temple on the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism and the site of the remains of the last Temple, the Western Wall.

For the past 1,300 years, the site has also been the location of Islam’s third-holiest shrine, the Noble Sanctuary, including the golden Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The conflicting claims to this area in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Temple Institute has made priestly garments in the past for display in the small museum it runs in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, but those were hand-sewn and cost upward of $10,000 each.

The institute recently received rabbinic permission to begin using sewing machines for the first time, bringing the cost down and allowing them to produce dozens or hundreds of garments, depending on how many orders come in.

If you are a descendant of the Jewish priests, a full outfit, including an embroidered belt 32 biblical cubits (15 meters) long, can be yours for about $800.

“Before, the clothes we made were to go on display. Now we’re engaged in the practical fulfillment of the divine commandment,” said Yehuda Glick, the Temple Institute’s director, at a ceremony marking the workshop’s opening last week.

The thread, six-ply flax, was purchased in India, and the diamond-patterned fabric was woven in Israel. The blue dye, which the Bible calls tchelet, is made from the secretions of a snail found in the Mediterranean Sea, and the red color comes from an aphid found on local trees.

The priests, made up of descendants of the Biblical figure Aaron, were an elite group entrusted with the Temple and its rituals, such as sacrificing animals and making other offerings to God. The memory of belonging to that class has been preserved by Jews through the centuries. Their most common family name is Cohen, meaning priest.

The Temple Institute and similarly minded believers think those modern priests will soon have to resume the rituals of their ancestors in a rebuilt Temple, and that by preparing their garments they are bringing that day closer.

“The light of God is coming back, and it’s happening before our eyes,” Glick said. “By sewing garments for the temple priests, his institute is continuing a process that was neglected for 2,000 years,” he said.

The Temple Institute does not advocate violent action and says its activities are purely educational. But groups like the institute, however marginal, have played on Muslim fears that Jews plan to destroy their holy sites to pave the way for rebuilding the Temple.

Adnan Husseini, formerly the top Muslim official at the site and now an adviser on Jerusalem affairs to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called the work of such groups a provocation.

“If they talk about building the third Temple, what does it mean? It means they will destroy the Islamic mosques,” Husseini said. “And if they do, they will make 1.5 billion enemies. It is God’s will that this is a place for Muslims to pray, and they must respect that.”

The first Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians 2,500 years ago, and the second was leveled by the Romans in the year 70. Since then, Judaism’s focus has changed drastically, from a Temple-centered ritual of animal sacrifice led by priests to a faith revolving around individual study and piety taught by rabbis.

Most Orthodox Jews see the rebuilding of the Temple as a theoretical event to be undertaken by God when the Jewish people are deemed deserving of it, and Judaism has traditionally forbidden making practical preparations of this kind.

But this small group made up of members of a hard-line fringe among Israel’s religious nationalists, view that thinking as an excuse for inaction.

“From the moment we see we’re ready here, the clothes will be ready and the priests can get to work when the time comes,” said Hagai Barashi, an assistant tailor. He wore a Biblical-looking robe, long sidelocks, and a pair of Nike flip-flops.

The first member of the priestly class who came to be measured was Nachman Kahana, a local rabbi. He removed his black jacket, and tailor Aviad Jarufi, a small man in a white robe and horn-rimmed glasses, took out his green measuring tape. The priestly garments can’t be sold off the rack — Jewish law specifies that they must be made to measure.

Yisrael Ariel, the rabbi who founded the Temple Institute, recited a traditional blessing, thanking God for keeping us alive, and sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this time.

Ariel, an expert on Temple ritual who was present as a soldier when Israel captured the Old City from Jordan in 1967, is associated with the extreme flank of Israel’s religious settlement movement. In the 1980s, he was the No. 2 man on a virulently anti-Arab parliamentary list that was eventually outlawed for racism.

His institute is dedicated to recreating the implements used in the Temple not only as a historical exercise but as a way to prepare for its reconstruction and, if possible, to speed up the process. In its 20 years of existence, the institute has recreated a golden seven-branched candelabra that cost $3 million, as well as harps, altars and containers for incense.

Many of the objects are on display in the institute’s museum, which also has a gift shop selling Temple-themed souvenirs like puzzles, balsa-wood models and board games. There are also posters depicting the Temple in Jerusalem, standing where the Dome of the Rock does now.

Many see the agenda as explosive.

“The more awareness you raise, and the more you stress that Judaism isn’t real without the Temple, the more you’re encouraging conflict over holy space in Jerusalem,” said Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli historian and journalist who wrote ‘The End of Days,’ a book about the struggle over the Temple Mount.

Mourning over the destruction of Jerusalem is normal in the month of Av, but at the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faith Movement all focus is on the “big day” — the day in which the Third Temple will be built.

As part of the preparations, hundreds of teenagers are expected to sign the “Temple Treaty” and to proclaim, “We commit to doing everything in our power to abide by this commandment and to devote at least half an hour a week toward this effort.”

In the youth conference conducted by the Temple Institute in the Old City of Jerusalem, scheduled for Thursday, participants will discuss possible plans of action to further the building of the Temple.

Under the title, “Building the Temple, it’s in Our Hands,” lessons will be given by rabbis identified with the Temple and for the first time ever, a treaty pertaining to the necessity of building the Temple will be revealed.

“God commanded us in his Torah, ‘build me a Temple and I shall dwell amongst you’,” as written in the document, “All of Israel must do everything they can to obey this commandment…”

In a conversation with Ynet, Temple Institute Director Rabbi Yehuda Glick vowed that this is the first event in a series that will institutionalize and widen youth activities.

“(Deceased general) Mota Gur said (during the conquest of east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War), ‘The Temple Mount is in our hands’, and I say now the Temple is in our hands,” said Glick.

“The treaty we composed contains a bunch of suggestions like Temple studies, embroidering priestly clothes, illustration for books on the subject, enhancing awareness, fundraising, or any other activity we believe can further the building of the Temple.

“No clause calls for the launching of LAW missiles or the exploding of the mosque at the Temple Mount,” Glick stressed.

Women are also expected to participate in Thursday’s event, during which they will watch a performance intended to encourage them to be active in the advancement of the Temple.

“This Temple is not just something historic stored in a memory chest,” said Glick, “everyone has the opportunity to contribute to this goal.”

“On the eve of Tisha B’Av the serious question is raised whether we should take the opportunity and ascend to the Temple Mount as it stands empty, inviting us to build our dream house on it.”

Whoever read this caption which appeared on the cover of the Maayanei Hayeshua movement’s latest pamphlet might have thought that this was a symbolic expression of the expected redemption on the eve of Tisha B’Av.

However, those with a keen eye noticed that the huge picture of the Temple Mount which was spread on the cover page was missing the Dome of the Rock, and that the pamphlet “cleaned” the mount of all Muslim signs.

The Islamic Movement’s northern branch did not like the graphic design work and is attributing the “infiltration of inciting material calling for the obliteration of al-Aqsa in all synagogues in Israel” to this Zionist movement.

On the right side of the photograph, which was taken from the steps leading down from the Jewish Quarter to the Western Wall square, the wall is seen and above it the Temple Mount.

Instead of the mosque and the dome, old Jerusalem houses are seen, “with the goal of expressing the yearning for something else on the Temple Mount,” according to the pamphlet’s editor.

Islamic Movement: worried, yet not surprised

The northern branch of the Islamic Movement claimed in response that the graphic manipulation of the picture was incitement.

The movement’s spokesman, Attorney Zahi Nujidat, told Ynet that he was worried that all the synagogues would adopt this kind of material which implicitly calls for the erasure of the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Moreover, Nujidat said he was not surprised to see the refurbished picture.

“It is no secret that the State and the nation of Israel have an arrow pointing in one direction, building a Third Temple at the expense of the al-Aqsa Mosque,” said the spokesman.

“Just today, I, along with members of the movement took a tour and we were exposed to shocking maps and documents signed by official Israeli bodies. Detailed plans for the construction of synagogues on the western side of the Temple Mount… as if they were public yards, are seen there.”

Nujidat added that some public institutions saw the picture of the Third Temple placed “on al-Aqsa’s territory,” and concluded by saying that “in my opinion and in the opinion of all Muslims, the Temple Mount is a mosque and we do not recognize anything else being planned to be built there.”

The chairman of the Maayanei Hayeshua movement told Ynet in response that “Jews throughout the world hope for a day in which the al-Aqsa Mosque will actually be obliterated from the Temple Mount and not just by means of Photoshop software.

“We have been waiting for this day for too long. When it happens, Jews from the entire world will come to Jerusalem in order to build the beloved Temple, and no Muslim will dare open his mouth against it. I hope that Israel is indeed ready for this day.”

A network of tunnels beneath the Aqsa Mosque, dubbed by the Israeli media as “tourist sites”, has already caused conspicuous cracks in superstructure of the Haram Al-Sharif esplanade which houses many historical sites, including the Dome of the Rock.

“I have no doubt the Israeli government has the will and desire to destroy the Aqsa Mosque. They only want to do it in a way that would make the demolition look as if it was a result of natural causes,” said Sheikh Mohamed Hussein, head of the Supreme Muslim Council which oversees the Jerusalem Sanctuary, considered the third holiest place in Islam. “Everything they do here shows they are hell-bent on destroying this Islamic shrine. It is time that Muslim peoples, Muslim governments and Muslim organizations across the world move to stop this blasphemy. Maybe tomorrow it will be too late.”

Palestinian and Muslim officials, including the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), have issued numerous warnings about Israeli excavations in the vicinity of and beneath the mosque, but to no avail.

Last week Jordan, the legal custodian of the Jerusalem sanctuary, asked Israel to stop sabotaging the foundations of the Aqsa Mosque, warning that, “this sensitive issue could set the whole region on fire.”

Israel ignored the Jordanian warning, opting to appease religious Jewish groups advocating the demolition of Islamic and Christian holy places in Jerusalem. Israel is also refusing to allow Muslim experts from the OIC and from UNESCO to inspect excavations beneath the mosque on the grounds that such a step would cast doubts on “Israeli sovereignty” over the occupied Arab city.

The Dome of the Rock

The international community, including Israel’s closest ally the United States, does not recognize Israel’s annexation of Eastern Jerusalem which followed the occupation of the city in 1967. Not that this has prevented successive Israeli governments from building huge Jewish settlements in and around the occupied Arab town, reducing East Jerusalem to a virtual ghetto and effectively cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank. The isolation of East Jerusalem has been completed with the construction of the gigantic “separation wall”.

Muslims and Christians from the West Bank are routinely prevented from accessing their holy places in East Jerusalem except for those in possession of special permits from the Israeli domestic intelligence service Shin Beth.

In addition to opening tunnels beneath the Haram Al-Sharif, the Israeli government has also allowed a fanatical Jewish sect, the Chabad movement, to build a synagogue next to the Western section of the Islamic compound. Chabad openly calls for the expulsion or extermination of Palestinians as well as the destruction of Islamic and Christian holy places in Palestine.

Muslim Waqf officials have described the synagogue as “a perpetual source of tension, provocation and harassment” as well as “a foothold” that signals Israel’s ill-intentions towards Islamic holy places.

“The decision to build a synagogue in this particular spot shows that Israel is interested in stoking the fire of religious tension,” said Adnan Al-Husseini, a high-ranking Muslim official in East Jerusalem.

“Clearly Israel is interested in neither peace nor co-existence.”

Israel is not only antagonizing and defying the world’s estimated 1.4 billion Muslims but is also suppressing efforts by the Arab minority in Israel to publicize what is happening to Islamic shrines in East Jerusalem.

On 24 August, paramilitary Israeli police stormed and shut down the offices of the Al-Aqsa Foundation in the town of Um Al-Fahm in Israel proper. Documents, including maps and other records pertaining to the Aqsa Mosque, especially the Israeli excavations underneath the Islamic shrine, were confiscated.

The Israeli government claims that the Al-Aqsa Foundation had links with Hamas.

“They are targeting us because of our faith,” said Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic movement in Israel. He added that the foundation was operating legally and that it was licensed by the Israeli authorities. He denied Israeli claims that the foundation was “coordinating with Hamas commanders in East Jerusalem,” describing the accusations as baseless.

Salah has been constantly harassed by Shin Beth for his activities in defense of Islamic holy places in Jerusalem. Several years ago, during a demonstration in Um Al-Fahm, a Shin Beth agent was caught trying to plant hashish in Salah’s pocket.

Palestinian leaders on both sides of the Green Line condemn the “growing persecution by the Israeli state of its Arab citizens”. The Legal Centre for Arab Minority rights in Israel has urged Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who issued the decision to shut down the offices of the Al-Aqsa Foundation, to revoke the decision. It says the measure “seriously infringes the freedom of speech and freedom of religion of the entire Arab minority in Israel”.

The organization also accused the Israeli government of callousness by shutting down the charity on the eve of the holy month of Ramadan, during which the Islamic movement steps up charity activities.

Israel routinely invokes Hamas connections when it seeks to shut down Islamic charitable institutions both in Israel and in the occupied territories. Earlier this year the Israeli army ransacked Islamic-run charities, businesses, clinics, orphanages and schools across the West Bank, claiming that they were linked to Hamas.

It’s the point from which the world expanded to its present form. It’s where God gathered earth to create the first man, Adam. Later, two temples were built there. The second was destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago, but the holiness of the temples sanctified the site for eternity.

During temple times, entry was limited by purity laws, so Israel’s leading rabbis warn Jews against entering the so-called Temple Mount — a 35-acre complex that comprises one-sixth of Jerusalem’s walled city — or face divine punishment by untimely death or eternal excommunication.

That didn’t stop a group of about 20 Orthodox Jews this morning. Despite the prohibition, religious Jews are visiting the Temple Mount in growing numbers.

“We know for sure where the temple should not be,” explained Hillel Weiss, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Elkana. Still, they tread softly, some in bare feet, as prescribed by the Torah.

“Our presence with kippot is a demand to rebuild the temple,” Weiss said, referring to the skull caps worn by observant Jews.

The obstacles in the way of a third temple are two Muslim mosques, which have been sitting atop the presumed temple ruins for roughly 1,300 years. The Temple Mount is known by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and is considered the third holiest site in Islam. It is from here that the prophet Mohammad ascended to heaven.

The group circumnavigated the temple, which meant they circumnavigated the gilded Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine that is Jerusalem’s most recognized building. But they didn’t see it. They never mentioned it.

“Now, I think we’re closest to the holiest place,” said the leader of the group, Yehuda Etzion, who was jailed for five years in the 1980s in a plot to blow up the two mosques [Why, then, one wonders, is he allowed anywhere near them now? — 800]

After performing a version of the Hakel ceremony, prescribed after the seventh Sabbath year for the harvest, an Israeli police officer kicked them out. Jews are allowed to enter the Temple Mount, but not to pray.

Just through one of the gates exiting the area, the men held hands in a circle and danced. “May the temple be rebuilt in Zion,” they sang loudly and joyously, referring to Jerusalem. “May the temple be rebuilt in Zion.” Over and over again.

For more media reports suggesting the imminent reality of a reconstructed Jewish temple in Jerusalem, along with a Texe Marrs audio file postulating the destruction of the two mosques currently sitting atop the temple mount by a man-made earthquake, READ MORE.

Temple time?
The Jerusalem Post
October 17, 2008

For centuries Jews have remembered and mourned the destruction of the Temple through traditions such as crushing a glass at weddings or leaving unpainted a patch of wall opposite the entrance to one’s home — each stressing that nothing can be perfect or complete without the Temple.

Built by Solomon in about 950 BCE and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the Temple was rebuilt about 70 years later but finally razed by the Romans in 70 CE.

Talmud scholar Rabbi Yohanan wrote: “During these times that the Temple is demolished, a person is not allowed to fill his mouth with laughter. This is because the verse [Psalms 126] says, ‘Then our mouths will be filled with laughter,’ and does not say ‘Now our mouths will be filled with laughter.’ And when is ‘then’? ‘Then’ will be when the Third Temple is rebuilt.”

In other words, “Jewish life without the Temple is like fish out of water,” says Rabbi Chaim Richman, head of the international department of the Temple Institute.

An author of 10 books on the Temple, Richman adds: “Do you realize that 202 commandments out of 613 must have the Temple to be fulfilled? Without the Temple, Judaism is a skeleton of what it’s supposed to be.”

To this end, the Temple Institute was founded in 1987 with the explicit goal of rebuilding the Temple. Located in the Jewish Quarter, some 100,000 visitors, about half of them Christian, visit the institute each year to learn about the First and Second Temples and preparations for the Third Temple.

The institute is presently involved in education, research and constructing vessels for use in the longed-for Temple.

Richman relates a story about Temple Institute founder Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, a paratrooper who helped liberate the Old City, including the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, in June 1967.

A Jordanian Muslim guide led the soldiers around the Temple Mount explaining where the Temple and other fixtures, such as the menora and altar, had stood. When asked why he was helpful, the guide explained, “We have a tradition that one day the Jews would win a war and rebuild the Temple. This is my contribution. I assume you’re starting tomorrow.”

Although Temple Institute staff have been called lunatics, zealots and racists by some, they maintain that there is nothing more natural for the Jewish faithful to do than make preparations for the Third Temple.

“The hallmark of the Third Temple is unparalleled peace and harmony,” says Richman. “I believe that the best that a Jew can do is to have the integrity to believe and do as much as possible toward building the Temple.”

According to Richman the first step in this process is soul searching. “The answer is returning to our spiritual roots. This adds up to building up the holy Temple. It’s the vehicle that builds up reconciliation between God and man… not just Jewish people.”

To achieve this, the Temple Institute aims “to rekindle the flame of the holy Temple in the hearts of mankind” through various educational initiatives. Toward that end the institute invests about $500,000 yearly in publications, tours and seminars as well as maintenance of its Web site.

But the long-term goal, Richman says, is “to do all in our limited power to bring about the building of the holy Temple in our time.”

How exactly this will be achieved is a point of contention.

According to Temple Institute director Yehuda Glick, many devout Jews believe the Temple “will come down somehow from heaven.”

He insists a legend like that can be very hard to overcome, even though no Jewish sources support the idea.

“We must understand that ‘heavenly’ doesn’t automatically mean mystical, superficial magic. During the Six Day War, the people of Israel were facing a major catastrophe and, in human eyes, we had no chance — we were to be wiped out. In six days we overcame enemies from every border and reunited Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. That is no less a miracle,” says Glick. [Needless to say, this is hardly an accurate account of the Six-Day War — 800]

“So too when we look back at 1938 [before the (alleged) Holocaust] and see we were almost wiped out,” he continues. “Who would have believed we were just 10 years from seeing the words of the prophets coming out of the Book and materializing [the establishment of Israel].

“We have total faith that we are to do what we are obligated to do. He has His ways to surprise us. But it must come from a wide-range call and action.”

Rabbi Moshe Silberschein, a professor of rabbinic literature at the Hebrew Union College, affirms the educational efforts of the Temple Institute. “I think the institute has educational value, helping children to see with their own eyes what they read about in the Bible and Mishna. It has value in helping them to visualize what the sacred service was like during the Second Temple period of Jewish history.”

Still, Silberschein does have some misgivings about the institute “once the institute goes beyond teaching history, heritage and sacred texts, and starts talking about building the Third Temple.” If, for example, a bulldozer were brought in to clear the path for the building of a Third Temple, that would be “tantamount to starting World War III,” he says. “This is hardly an auspicious way to fulfill the biblical verse in Isaiah 56, ‘For My House shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.'”

Rabbi David Forman, former director of the Israel office of the Union for Reform Judaism, also takes issue with the institute’s aims. “I’m opposed for two reasons: one is purely ideological/theological, and the second is practical/political,” says Forman. “Firstly, the reconstruction of the Temple would thrust us back to a time where the expression of worship for God was exercised through sacrifice. According to our tradition, when the Temple was destroyed, the notion of sacrifice went by the wayside, and instead, in the rabbinic period, a new form of worship came into being — prayer — which seems to be a far more civilized way of asking, praising, thanking and praying to God.

“Secondly, it [rebuilding the Temple] would be terribly disruptive because of the emotional attachments the three monotheistic religions have to Jerusalem, the holy city, and to alter it and the status of the holy sites in any way that would impinge on spiritual longing would be a recipe for disaster and could lead not just to a local conflagration but to a wider one given the tension it would create,” he explains, adding that “it would exacerbate an already sensitive situation that would engage the entire world community and certainly the Islamic community.”

Eda Haredit spokesman Shmuel Poppenheim adds: “Hitgarut ha’umot [inciting nations] is forbidden… it awakens hate and repulsion, and could create a disastrous chain of events that would impede the coming of the Messiah.

Also, “In our days it is forbidden to enter the Temple Mount, which [institute founder] Ariel encourages. This is very grave and punishable by karet [premature death],” he continues. “But our main opposition [to the Temple Institute] is Ariel’s premise that we are redemption-bound… His nationalism damages the pure faith of the Jews. Because of our sins we were exiled from the Land of Israel and the Temple; only our goodness and the will of God will rebuild the Temple, not our hands.

“It is problematic that Ariel mixes religious precepts, like redemption, with political principles like democracy and the State of Israel.”

When asked how the Third Temple would come about, Richman responds: “I don’t do scenarios. I’m not shying away from the question. The Temple is not up to the Temple Institute, but up to the people of Israel. They have a representative government. Whether they’ll act in accordance with what it means to be a Jew, I don’t know.”

He quotes Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who said, “If we were the people we’re supposed to be, the Muslims would come to us and ask, ‘Please build us a Temple.'”

Asked about the timetable for construction, Richman, an ordained rabbi who quotes Maimonides on Temple matters but draws popular wisdom from “rabbis” Mark Twain and Yogi Berra, laughs, “I don’t know, but I think we’re behind schedule.”

In the meantime, the Temple Institute focuses its energies on education and preparing vessels for use in the Third Temple.

A team of researchers, rabbis and scientists collaborate to ensure the needed items meet scriptural and rabbinic criteria. Beyond those standards, the craftsmen have artistic license to construct vessels as they deem appropriate.

“It’s a very complex process,” Richman explains. “Some items have taken over 10 years of research. We have groups of scholars who sift through superfluous information regarding concepts that have become completely forgotten or little is known of them. We are taking a section of Torah wisdom and reactivating it.”

Knowledge of the construction of Temple objects is so obscure that “many people have asked us if we’re allowed to do it. They ask, ‘Isn’t God supposed to do that?'”

Construction of the high priest’s breastplate is an example of the complexity involved. According to Exodus 28 the material had to be woven of “gold, sky blue, dark red, and crimson-dyed wool, and of twisted linen.”

Metalsmiths beat the gold into thin sheets, then cut it into fine threads to be woven into the material. The sky-blue color (techelet in Hebrew, said by the Mishna to resemble indigo) was a dye obtained from a snail known as hilazon.

The exact identification of this animal and the method used to produce the dye is the subject of extensive research. Most scholars today believe it to be the Mediterranean snail known as Murex trunculus.

“The dark red color, argaman in Hebrew, is also derived from a snail, possibly the Murex trunculus as well,” says Richman. “According to this theory, the difference in color is a product of the amount of time the substance is initially exposed to sunlight.”

The crimson color is produced from a worm referred to in the Torah as the “crimson worm,” tola’at shani in Hebrew, a mountain worm that has been identified as Kermes biblicus.

The Hebrew word that appears for “linen” is shesh, which means “six.” Researchers believe this requires each thread to be six-ply.

The 12 stones for the breastplate presented another problem since linguists don’t agree on what the ancient names intend. Extensive research eventually revealed that ancient stones were classified by color, not gem family.

“The final authority is the midrash, which explains that the 12 tribes of Israel each had a flag, and the flag color matched the color of the stone worn on the high priest’s breastplate representing that tribe. So there was maybe more than one stone to fit the requirement of the verse. We look at several criteria and find the best. That’s the goal… to find the best possible.”

To date the institute has created more than 60 vessels for use in the Temple, which are on display at the institute. These include the showbread table, incense altar, and head and breast plates for the high priest.

One of the most expensive pieces is a golden menora showcased on a platform near the Western Wall. Made of a single piece of solid gold poured over a metal base, the half-ton fixture contains about 45 kilograms of gold and is valued at $3 million. Its design and construction was based on rabbinic sources as well as Roman-Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, himself a priest who served in the Temple.

The absence of a red heifer presents a problem as its ashes must consecrate the articles in accordance with Numbers 19 and rabbinical instruction. Otherwise the priests would have to use the vessels in a state of impurity. Citing security concerns, Richman would not comment on the search for the red heifer. The institute has also begun mass production of priestly garments. It recently received rabbinic authorization to use special sewing machines to produce the apparel, bringing the price of each garment down from about $10,000 to $800.

Dozens of kohanim (members of the priestly line dating to Aaron) have placed their orders.

Until construction on the Third Temple can begin, the institute seeks to build a World Center for Temple Knowledge outside Jaffa Gate.

Slated for construction in 2012, the 2,500-square-meter facility will offer a 3-D experience of “going up to the Temple” as well as in-depth exhibits and galleries.

These and other projects aside, the institute’s long-term goal is to rebuild the Temple, which Richman insists must be preceded by a shift in thinking.

“Everything that goes on in this country relates to the spiritual struggle behind it all — especially with the people of Israel. It’s all about a total struggle about who we are and what our destiny is. We’re not called to be the best doctors and lawyers and Hollywood producers — that is not our destiny. We’re called to be a nation of priests,” he says.

“The Temple is a real litmus paper test of that equation. We are talking about the big existential question: Who are we?

JERUSALEM — A prominent U.S. rabbi recently ascended the Temple Mount — Judaism’s most revered site — stirring a quiet debate among some within the Jewish religious community about whether Jews should be permitted to enter the mount.

Some rabbis forbid Jewish entry, while others permit it. Those who oppose ascending the mount may indirectly contribute to the current Islamic consolidation of the site, argued Rabbi Moshe Dovid Tendler, a Jewish law and ethics professor and top rabbinic scholar.

“The reality is that slowly the area has become without Jews,” Tendler told WND. “The claim of the Arabs that it belongs to them is being affirmed by our (Jewish) absence.”

A video of Tendler visiting the Temple Mount in January was released this past week on YouTube by the Temple Institute, a nonprofit organization promoting awareness of the mount.

The video sparked controversy within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where some rabbis forbid Jews to go up to the mount until the Third Temple is built, even though there are records of Jews, including some of the most prominent Jewish law scholars, visiting the Temple ruins from the Byzantine period until recently.

On Vosizneias, a popular ultra-Orthodox blog, user opinions regarding Tendler’s visit ran the gamut from praise for the rabbi to calling for him to be excommunicated.

“Way to go Rabbi Tendler,” wrote one reader. “Continue to show the world that you are not religious.”

Another commented, “(More power to you). About time someone has the guts to stand up for the real (Jewish law).”

Many contemporary rabbinic authorities permit entry to the outer areas of the Mount, which can be measured by a change in the kind of foundation stone. According to Jewish law, the sanctity of the Temple Mount is structured in concentric circles. In the innermost circles, where the Holy of Holies was said to be located, the restrictions of access are the greatest.

During Temple times, only the Kohen Hagadol, or High Priest, could enter the most restricted area, and this only once a year, on the fast day of Yom Kippur. The outer circles are less restricted.

Tendler, who is a professor and rabbi at Yeshiva University in New York, told WND the exact locations of the restricted areas are well-known. He asserted establishing proper Orthodox Jewish tours of the Temple Mount would help those who currently ascend the Mount from violating Jewish law.

“The rabbinic ban has not been working. We know how to visit the (mount) properly. As of now, secular tour guides take people where they should not to go; they have become a negative force. We need to correct this.”

Most rabbis who ban Jewish visits justify their decrees by claiming Jewish ascent may violate the sanctity of the mount.

Tendler countered: “[Holiness] is not emphasized by not going into a place of [holiness], but by going into a place of [holiness] properly prepared.

“The idea of forbidding this area because it’s an area of [holiness] is counter to what we know about man’s relationship with [holiness]. … Holiness comes from man’s behavior. The holiness of [the Temple Mount] comes from all the [holiness] of the [Jewish nation].” Tendler added, “If we come and pray here, we make the place holy.”

In the 1970s, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate ruled it was forbidden to enter any part of the mount. Followers of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, one of the leaders of the religious Zionist movement, opposed the ban. The past few years, more and more rabbis have ruled visits to the mount are permitted.

Some have argued the rabbis who forbid Jewish entry to the Temple Mount may indirectly contribute to the current Islamic consolidation of the site. The lack of a large number of Jewish visitors is likely a major factor in Israeli government’s restriction of Jewish ascent to the Mount.

Temple Mount: No-pray zone

Israel recaptured the Temple Mount during the 1967 Six Day War. Currently under Israeli control, Jews and Christians are barred from praying on the Mount.

The Temple Mount was opened to the general public until September 2000, when the Palestinians started their Intifada by throwing stones at Jewish worshippers after then-candidate for prime minister Ariel Sharon visited the area.

Following the onset of violence, the new Sharon government closed the Mount to non-Muslims, using checkpoints to control all pedestrian traffic for fear of further clashes with the Palestinians.

The Temple Mount was reopened to non-Muslims in August 2003. It remains open, but only Sundays through Thursdays, 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., and not on any Christian, Jewish or Muslim holidays or other days considered “sensitive” by the Waqf.

During “open” days, Jews and Christian are allowed to ascend the Mount, usually through organized tours and only if they conform first to a strict set of guidelines, which includes demands that they not pray or bring any “holy objects” to the site. Visitors are banned from entering any of the mosques without direct Waqf permission. Rules are enforced by Waqf agents, who watch tours closely and alert nearby Israeli police to any breaking of their guidelines.

During Tendler’s visit to the mount, he can be heard in the video complaining about the Israeli rules.

“I’m little bit annoyed at the instructions that we get,” he quipped, “as if we were aliens and have to be told how to behave on [the Temple Mount].”

Muslim holy site?

King Solomon built the First Temple in the 10th century B.C. The Babylonians destroyed it in 586 B.C. The Jews built the Second Temple in 515 B.C. after Jerusalem was freed from Babylonian captivity. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple in A.D. 70.

The First Temple stood for about 400 years, the second for almost 600. Both Temples served as the center of religious worship for the whole Jewish nation. All Jewish holidays centered on worship at the Temple — the central location for the offering of sacrifices and the main gathering place for the Jewish people.

According to the Talmud, God created the world from the foundation stone of the Temple Mount.

The site is believed to be the biblical Mount Moriah, where Abraham fulfilled God’s test of faith by demonstrating his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Jewish tradition also holds that Mashiach — literally “the anointed one,” the Jewish Messiah — will come and rebuild the third and final temple on the Mount in Jerusalem and bring redemption to the entire world.

The Western Wall, called the Kotel in Hebrew, is the one part of the Temple Mount that survived the Roman destruction of the Second Temple and stands to this day in Jerusalem.

The Temple Mount has remained a focal point for Jewish services for thousands of years. Prayers for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple have been uttered three times daily by religious Jews since the destruction of the Second Temple. Throughout all the centuries of Jewish exile from their land, thorough documentation shows the Jews never gave up their hope of returning to Jerusalem and reestablishing their Temple. To this day Jews worldwide pray facing the Western Wall, while Muslims turn their backs away from the Temple Mount and pray toward Mecca.

Muslims constructed the al‐Aqsa Mosque around A.D. 709 to serve as a place of worship near a famous shrine, the gleaming Dome of the Rock, built by an Islamic caliph, or supreme ruler.

About 100 years ago, Muslims began to associate al‐Aqsa in Jerusalem with the place Muhammad ascended to heaven. Islamic tradition states Muhammad took a journey in a single night from “a sacred mosque” — believed to be in Mecca in southern Saudi Arabia — to “the farthest mosque,” and from a rock there ascended to heaven to receive revelations from Allah that became part of the Koran.

While Palestinians and many Muslim countries claim exclusivity over the Mount, and while their leaders strenuously deny the Jewish historic connection to the site, things weren’t always this way. In fact, historically, Muslims never claimed the al‐Aqsa Mosque as their “third holiest site” and always recognized the existence of the Jewish Temples.

According to an Israeli attorney, Dr. Shmuel Berkovits, Islamic tradition mostly disregarded Jerusalem. He points out in his book “How Dreadful is this Place!” that Muhammad was said to loathe Jerusalem and what it stood for to the other monotheistic faiths.

Muhammad also made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and sanctifying only one place — the Kaaba in Mecca — to signify the unity of Allah. As late as the fourteenth century, Islamic scholar Taqi al‐Din Ibn Taymiyya, whose writings later influenced the ultraconservative Wahhabi movement in Arabia, ruled that sacred Islamic sites exist only on the Arabian Peninsula, and that “in Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls sacred, and the same holds true for the tombs of Hebron.”

Not until the late nineteenth century — when Jews started immigrating to Palestine — did Muslim scholars claim that Muhammad tied his horse to the Western Wall and associate Muhammad’s purported night journey with the Temple Mount.

The above article can be found at:http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92578The rebuilding of the temple will no doubt be preceded by the mass expulsion of troublesome Palestinian Muslims and Christians near the temple precincts. And that is precisely what’s happening now, with Israeli officialdom stepping up efforts to evict Palestinian residents from their ancestral homes in Arab East Jerusalem:

JERUSALEM — A report published Friday by a United Nations agency has warned that the problems facing the people of Silwan, who are facing eviction from their homes, are replicated throughout East Jerusalem.

At least 60,000 out of the estimated 225,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem are at risk of having their homes obliterated because they have been deemed illegal by Israeli officialdom, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated.

Some 90 Palestinian buildings were demolished in 2008 alone, uprooting about 400 people.

All this destruction is being wrought as part of a systematic policy of ensuring that the entire city of Jerusalem falls into Israeli hands, even though a raft of UN resolutions have insisted there is no legal validity to building settlements in East Jerusalem. To date one-third of East Jerusalem has been expropriated by Israel and almost 200,000 settlers housed.

A makeshift tent of black net walls connected to a tarpaulin roof with nails and timber has become the nerve centre of a struggle to save 1,500 Palestinians in East Jerusalem in immediate danger of having their homes destroyed.

Fakhri Abu Diab has lived here in the Silwan district all 47 years of his life but has been told that he and his family must leave so that a plan to use Biblical archaeology for political ends can be executed. According to the municipality of Jerusalem, 88 houses must be demolished to extend the nearby City of David, a park honoring the king reputed to have conquered the city three millennia ago.

The Israeli flag that rolls down the facade of a gleaming block of apartments on the hill overlooking the protest tent signifies the local authority’s real intentions, Diab believes. Whereas the state has spared no expense providing armed security for the Israeli settlers who have moved into the building, the Arab community who had been here beforehand lacks a secondary school and other essential services.

“We know the municipality wants to bring settlers here,” said Diab. “They want the land without us, without Palestinians.”

Like many of his neighbors, Diab lives in a house that was built before Israel seized East Jerusalem in 1967. “We have been here for many generations,” he said. “I have no other place to go.”

A short stroll from the American Colony, a family-run hotel that seeks to recreate the ambience of the early 20th century, the residents of the Sheikh Jarrah district are preparing for the next wave of evictions. In 1972 two organizations representing Israeli settlers convinced their country’s land registrar that 28 dunums (28,000 squared metres) here should be registered in their name.

In the living room of Maher Hanoun’s house, political activists from Scotland and the Czech Republic sip coffee and smoke cigarettes. Hanoun has long refused to pay the rent demanded by the settler organizations. Last year this father of five was imprisoned for not complying with the terms of an eviction order.

“Many times the lawyers for the Israeli settlers have offered us a lot of money,” he said. “It is not a matter of money. Here is the house where I was born and my kids were born. After they evacuate us, they will build 250 apartments for settlers.”

Hanoun, who is embroiled in a protracted court battle, vows to continue resisting. “We are not fighting with weapons,” he said. “We are fighting with our bodies and our voices.”

Like Hanoun, the Al-Kurd family lived in a house built as part of a project implemented jointly by the Jordanian government and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The project was designed to accommodate 28 Palestinian refugee families who fled from their homes during the violence of 1948, a period which the state of Israel considers a war of independence but which Palestinians label the ‘nakbah’ (catastrophe).

In November last year, Israeli soldiers forced the Al-Kurds out of their home. Later that month Mohammad Al-Kurd, also known as Abu Kamel, died from a massive heart attack that locals attribute to shock.

In the 1990s, pressure exerted by Madeleine Albright, then U.S. secretary of state [and crypto-Jew — 800], led to the freezing of work on an Israeli settlement in Ras Al-Amud, another part of East Jerusalem. Although the construction work resumed after she left office, human rights activists cite it as an example of what can be achieved on the rare instances when Israel is challenged in strident terms by its chief ally.

So far, the current head of U.S. diplomacy, Hillary Clinton, has only delivered a mild rebuke to the expansion of settlements by describing them as “unhelpful”. In a leaked internal document, the European Commission went further earlier this year by contending that Israel’s activities in and around Jerusalem “constitute one of the most acute challenges” to the prospect of an eventual peace accord with the Palestinians.

Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said that this was the second such report that the European Union’s executive arm has drawn up in recent years. Yet when it made similar observations in a previous report, no follow-up action was taken.

Nevertheless, Halper voiced optimism that the election of Barack Obama as U.S. President and the international revulsion at Israel’s attacks on Gaza in December and January may prompt both the U.S. and the EU to demand genuine change in Israeli conduct. “People are beginning to speak out in ways that they haven’t done before,” he said. “It is too early to say if this is the beckoning of a new era or just a passing phenomenon.”

The above article can be found at:http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46697The idea of a reconstructed temple in Jerusalem also permeates Jewish pop culture, as can be seen from the following excerpts from an interview with a major Israeli music producer:

Top Song Producer Lawrence Dermer returns to Jewish roots
Israel National News
June 12, 2008

“Israel We Are Strong” is the latest chapter in the story of Lawrence Dermer, a Grammy-nominated, BMI Award-winning producer for big time acts such as Jennifer Lopez and Gloria Estefan. Although his name is not well known, a quick search on the internet reveals his hand in a huge number of pop hits starting in the 1980s. But that all changed several years ago when a life-altering personal crisis lead the Dermer family to temporarily give up music and turn to Judaism.

With a little help from Chabad, Dermer returned to music with “Third House Rising,” a full length album with Jewish themes. Recently, Dermer visited Israel to produce the single “Israel We Are Strong” for Israel’s 60th anniversary. Israel We Are Strong is a power-pop radio-friendly anthem with English lyrics and backing vocals by famous Israeli singer Shlomo Gronich. The accompanying video features Dermer and his family singing with groups of different segments of Israeli society. Proceeds for sale of the track go to the S.O.S. Sderot Emergency Fund.

Question: Tell us about the songs on the “Third House Rising” album.

Lawrence Dermer: I wrote all the songs with my wife Robin. It was a family project for us. The message is that we all have a higher purpose here and a divine purpose and our purpose is to heal the world and create inspiration in each other and lift each other up and make the world a better place.

Question: What about the music? Why did you make it a dance track?

Lawrence Dermer: We wanted to make this whole project mostly danceable. I felt it was going to be an interesting combination of elements. Dancing brings joy and elevation, but usually when we think of dance music, usually the message is very lightweight. There’s not a lot of meaning in the lyrics. It’s just kind of “let’s jump up and down and dance and have a party with a great beat”. So we wanted to try and combine the physicality of dancing with an uplifting positive spiritual message. The bulk of the album is definitely up-tempo. There are some ballads as well.

As far as the music, sometimes things just kind of channel through me. Where it takes me is where it takes me.

Question: What does “Third House Rising” mean?

Lawrence Dermer: What it means to us is the Third Temple. We’re talking about the Beit Hamikdash. But we’re talking about it not only in a physical sense, the Third Temple being rebuilt, but also a state of mind and reference to the coming of Moshiach and how we don’t feel like we’re waiting for that day to come.

We feel like it’s in all of us to do our part to bring the new era to the world and a new era to Israel and where everybody is elevating themselves and G-d and preparing themselves for a new way of life — a better way of life — where there’s no more evil and no more terrible things happening in the world. No more greed and everybody is just living a great and enlightened existence.

It sounds a little idealistic but that’s the message, and we know a lot of people share that message and we do our part and we feel if everybody tries to do their part this will bring a better day in the world.

Question: What concerts have you done? Where else have you performed?

Lawrence Dermer: We’ve been doing shows all over Florida in Chabad houses and JCCs, we’re going to Corpus Christi, Texas for a big JCC fundraiser over there. We were actually in Crown Heights for a big Shabbaton. There was about 800 or 1,000 people there. We’ve been going all over the place.

The complete interview can be found at:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126478It’s worth noting that even bizarre alien cults, such as the International Raelian Movement, are — while simultaneously condemning Israeli violence against Palestinians — also calling for the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem:

Yahweh speaks to Rael
Westender (Australia)
April 20, 2009

Rael, founder and leader of the International Raelian Movement, recently proposed a one-state solution for Palestine in which Jews and Palestinians would combine resources to create a powerful, wealthy state forged from brotherhood and love. He said today that the need to achieve that goal has become especially urgent.

“On April 12, the fourth full day of Pessah (Passover), I received a message from Yahweh, the leader of the Elohim, the extraterrestrial scientists who created all forms of life on Earth,” Rael said in an official statement released this morning. “This message from the Elohim, our creators, was directed to the Jewish people.”

Rael said that although the first messages he transmitted from the Elohim years ago reminded Jews to return to IsRael, the new one reprimands them, saying they were not meant to steal the Palestinians’ property and massacre them.

“The message says they were to be both Zionists and Palestinians — that they were to return and unite in love with the people living there, who are genetically their brothers,” Rael said. “By combining their knowledge and resources with those of the local population, they could have created a rich, unified state that would have set an example for the entire world. That was their sacred mission. Instead, they robbed the Palestinian people, taking their property and forcing them into exile. And they have even driven them into concentration camps, where they recently massacred them in Gaza. Yahweh said these actions have transformed the Chosen People into criminals who have created a racist, violent state that He compared to a cancer in humanity because it despises life and the rights of non-Jews.”

Rael said Yahweh told him that because many Jews have betrayed the mission assigned them by the Elohim, that of guiding humanity toward more love, tolerance and consciousness and less violence, that the state they created has been condemned.

“Yahweh said the violent, monstrous state of IsRael will vanish quickly, and that Jews who try to preserve it will no longer be part of the Chosen People,” Rael said. “He warned that unless they immediately start working toward a unified Palestinian state and renounce racist Zionism, they will be dispersed in an unremitting Diaspora lasting seven generations.

“Those who opposed crimes against humanity perpetrated by the currently racist state of IsRael, including the recent genocide in Gaza, will still be part of the Chosen People, retaining their right to Judaity,” Rael said, adding that Yahweh has given them new instructions. “They’re to start working toward Palestinian Zionism — a state where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live together in harmony with equal rights,” he said.

“They must help prepare the construction of the Third Temple, the Embassy of the Elohim. And they must welcome my return as Yahweh’s son and Last Messenger of Our Creators, who will bring centuries of peace on Earth with their return.”

Rael said messages brought from the Elohim by previous prophets gave recipients centuries to accomplish things.

“This new message from Yahweh gives them only several years at most — and it could be just a matter of months,” he said. “They have not a moment to waste.”

Newly published archaeological evidence attests to the fact that ancient Jews used human skulls in ceremonies, despite a strict Halakhic prohibition on touching human remains.

British researcher Dan Levene from the University of Southampton published findings in Biblical Archaeological Review about the human skulls, known as incantation bowls, some of which bear inscriptions in Aramaic.

The skulls were unearthed in present-day Iraq (formerly Babylonia) and are believed to have been used during the Talmudic era.

At least one of them appears to be that of an anonymous woman.

“When I presented these findings in Israel, people told me, ‘It is not possible that this is Jewish,'” said Levene. “But it is certainly Jewish.”

Levene added that, despite going against conventional wisdom, the talisman was likely used by someone desperate, and that there have been past cases of skulls being used to ward off increased ghosts or demons.

“The fact remains that belief in demons was widespread at this time among Jews as well as other peoples,” writes Levene. “Incantation bowls are known not only from Jewish communities but from other communities as well.”

To combat [conjure?] demons — who cause medical problems as well as other mishaps and ills — people invoked numerous magic rites and formulas.

RAMALLAH — On a cool and overcast day, a procession of grim-faced people filed silently past pictures of heaps of skeletons piled high, of emaciated survivors with blank stares corralled behind barbed wire, barely clinging to life.

The memorial and museum commemorating the six million Jews [allegedly] killed by the Nazis during World War II could have been in any of the many international capitals where the Holocaust is remembered.

But this time the memorial was taking place in a quite unexpected place; the Palestinian village Ni’ilin, west of Ramallah in the central West Bank, has established the first ever Holocaust museum in the Palestinian territories.

Ni’ilin’s Hamas mayor Ayman Nafaa later led a group on a Palestinian version of March of the Living through the village’s narrow and winding streets. March of the Living is an international educational [i.e., indoctrination] program, involving Jewish youngsters spending two weeks in Poland where they march silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau, which was one of the largest Nazi concentration camps.

Establishment of the Ni’ilin museum was the brainchild of Israeli-Arab lawyer Khaled Mehamid from the Israeli town Umm Al-Fahm. Four years ago he established a Holocaust museum in his hometown.

Mehamid approached Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, which provided the museum with pictures and materials in Arabic. Its directors now plan to start holding educational tours [i.e., more indoctrination] for students to the museum.

Mehamid had originally visited Ni’ilin to comfort the Palestinian family of a young boy who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers during a protest.

“I met the mayor and explained to him that the Jews have their own pain and that this is inextricably linked with the suffering of Palestinians today under Israeli occupation,” Mehamid told IPS.

Ni’ilin has lost four of its youths to Israeli bullets. Hundreds of the village’s population of 5,000 have been arrested, wounded and beaten up during protests against Israel’s illegal separation barrier which cuts through the village, separating farmers from their land.

The building of this wall, which the International Court at The Hague deemed illegal, has meant the confiscation of thousands of acres of West Bank land by the Israeli authorities for the benefit of the illegal settlements.

“Most of the village is dependent on agriculture for a living,” Hassan Moussa, a member of Ni’ilin’s Popular Committee told IPS. “Sixty farmers have lost land, 40 of them all of their agricultural fields.”

“If you take into account their dependents and their employees, we are talking about 600 people directly affected by the land confiscation,” said Moussa.

[In the face of so much injustice, why would these long-suffering Palestinians be expected to care at all about Jewish suffering that allegedly happened more than 60 years ago on another continent? Especially when that very injustice — which they face every day, here and now — comes at the hands of those very same people that supposedly suffered themselves? — 800]

In an effort to fight the continued expropriation of village land, Ni’ilin villagers, together with Israeli activists and international supporters, have been holding weekly anti-wall protests which have often ended up violently.

Moussa lost his 10-year-old nephew Ahmed Moussa after he was shot in the head with live ammunition by an Israeli sniper. The boy was not involved in any stone-throwing.

The following day Yousef Amira, 17, was left brain-dead and died a week later after he was shot in the head with rubber-coated steel bullets.

Arafat Rateb Khawaje, 22, was shot in the back with live ammunition last December. The same day Mohammed Khawaje, 20, was shot in the head with live ammunition. He died three days later.

[Do you think any of these victims of Israel’s ongoing, internationally-sanctioned holocaust against the Palestinians will be honored by any museums? — 800]

Moussa was arrested last year while escorting the foreign media at a demonstration. No charges were brought against him, and he was eventually granted bail for 800 dollars, which has not been returned.

Moussa agrees with Mehamid that it is important for Palestinians to understand the tragedy that befell the Jews in Europe but which also [conveniently] created added impetus for establishment of the State of Israel.

Over 500 Palestinian villages were razed and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were made refugees by the Israelis [not to mention the thousands killed in cold blood] following the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

This followed the UN’s 1947 partition of British Mandate Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states.

The reaction of the villagers to the museum has been largely positive. “But we have different attitudes here, and some of the people have questioned why we focus on the suffering of the Jews when that is over,” said Moussa.

“They say we should instead focus on our suffering which is current and unresolved, especially as we are being persecuted by the very same people who were themselves persecuted.”

But both Mehamid and Moussa have been quick to explain to dissenters that establishment of the museum is not purely for altruistic reasons but serves the Palestinian cause.

“We believe the Israelis have used the Holocaust for political reasons, to garner the sympathy of the international community,” Mehamid told IPS. “This has been done for both the establishment of the state and for the continued building of settlements and illegal expropriation of Palestinian land and other natural resources,” he added.

It is only through understanding the genuine suffering of the Jews, and how this suffering was used politically, can Palestinians fight back on an even playing ground, said Moussa.

“We acknowledge Hitler’s massacre and in return we would like the Israelis to acknowledge our rights,” said Mehamid. [Don’t hold your breath — 800]

A senior Iranian official says Israel and the US have had a hand in the mosque bombing that shook the southeastern city of Zahedan to its core.

“The bomb tragedy that occurred yesterday in the city of Zahedan is awash with Israeli and US fingerprints,” said Tehran’s Interim Friday Prayers Leader, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami.

“Without a doubt, it was a scheme to drive a wedge between the Shia population and the Sunni minority in Iran,” he added.

Ayatollah Khatami said that the perpetrators of the bomb attack have been identified and will be brought to justice.

At least 25 people were killed and 125 others were injured on Thursday after bombers targeted a religious ceremony in the Shia Amir al-Momenin mosque.

The mosque was partially destroyed by the blast.

Jalal Sayah, deputy provincial governor of the Sistan-Baluchistan province that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Friday that at least three people have been arrested with regards to the terrorist attacks.

“According to the information obtained they planted the bomb at the behest of the United States and its allies,” Sayah said.

The Synagogue of Satan

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